Cold
by definitelywalkerbait
Summary: "The adrenaline-fueled resolution that charged his limbs lapsed step by step until the frantic brunt of his gait devolved into an angled stumble. With a guttural rustle, his stomach jolted, cheeks puffed, knees buckled and he keeled over on all fours, puking fluids." Daryl confronts Rick and busts out of the prison gates to track Carol only to come across with his worst nightmare.
1. The Slatch

**Disclaimer: I owe nothing. The Walking Dead belong to Robert Kirkman and AMC. No copyright infringement intended.**

**Hey everyone!**

**Well, since the show is so adamant to keep hiding Carol, I decided that the only way for me to get what I want is to sit down and write it :) Even though believing Carol to be a murderer is a very bitter pill to swallow, I will stick to the show and accept this arc as presented thus far. **

**A few words about the story: Set after 4x05, this is an AU fic, picks up from Carol's banishment and won't follow the show storyline. It will unravel in the time jump between the Rick/Daryl confrontation and the prison attack to give the characters and the dynamic between them the time they need to evolve. Some pivotal show moments will be incorporated. Group involvement and character conflict should be expected. **

**Strict, passionate, unapologetic Caryl all the way *swoooon***

**On a side note, I know I still owe you a drabble to conclude The Last One Standing series, but my muse is severely messed up with all the nonsense the writers served us in respect with Carol in season 4. So, please bear with me a little bit longer and I'll try to wrap up that one soon.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

"_It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."  
― __William Blake_

Daryl had tarried in his close-lipped ferment the entire time Rick spoke, before reacting.

He had registered everything with a straight-faced detachment, effulgent eyes boring holes in Rick's angst-ridden gaze.

What Carol did –her reasons. What Rick did –his reasons. Two cases set in stone, a lose-lose situation for both parties involved.

There was no reaction that could possibly ensconce his feelings about what had happened during his absence. Physically present, he was listening glassy-eyed. Spiritually light years away, crawling deeper and deeper in a no-exit rabbit hole, wrestling hopelessly against countervailing forces vying for his clarity: overflowing wrath tangled up with paralyzing pain, unnerving dread entwined intrinsically with almighty consternation. Failing to word the brimming profanities, mouth too rusty to catch up with the wheels swirling override in his head, he just stood there; dead still, stone cold, lips in a chalky white hue drained of blood, jaw hanging in a rictus of petrified incredulity, no detectable sign of breathing blowing his chest. Whatever it was lurking and billowing inside his chest, it was too bottled up to be released.

He had heard and heard and heard, pinned on the spot, as Rick scrounged through necessary or unsolicited explanations, reasonings, excuses, until moving lips and buzzing ears were all there was.

The original masterplan of catapulting a bolt right between the eyes of the God-sydromed person who had taken away two lives had gone south. He felt protective about her despite everything, mind transfixed on getting back to the prison in time. Key word, in time. Before all hell break loose. Good intentions failed, once again. He had been too late. Too late to connect those glaring dots before the events jumped ahead of him.

Because he didn't need Rick's intel, he had already known. Somehow, sometime during the run, he had figured it all out. Between fighting off and traipsing around a gigantic herd, between gathering the necessary medicine, between dealing with Tyreese's self-destructive imprudence, Michonne's pretentiously nonchalant denial about her Governor obsession and Bob's selfish addiction, between staring at the jasper stone embellishing his dirt-covered hands as if it was chanting him a magical spell, he had put two and two together and the random pieces mingling around in slipshod disorder up to that moment were suddenly in place, depicting the full picture. He knew who the killer was, he knew what Carol had done and had no clue how he felt about the whole situation.

Until the news of her banishment gushed in that was. The more Rick elaborated, the more time flowed the more his benumbed dissension towards Carol thawed, every virulent pang making a u-turn, pointing directly at the man describing the woman he was so fond of as an unwelcome outcast.

How was it possible for someone to do something so out of character and then vanish in thin air? She had thrown him all the crumbs, shared all the signs, turned to him for help. 'Sometimes I feel I'm tail spinning,' she told him once, 'as if I don't know how strong is strong enough, where we have to stop'. He had brushed her off with a dismissing 'You're doin' fine' and went hunting. Easier, so much easier to forever run away from her. Angry. Hurt. Betrayed. Furious. At her. And then at himself, for deliberately and diligently ignoring the foreboding omens, her shady stares at a faraway vacant point, her mute pleas for help, her needs, her fears, her bewildered mindset, steering inexorably to right there and right now.

It didn't matter, though. Things they did or didn't do bore no significance. Nothing mattered. Not now that Rick had kicked her out. Not now that he didn't know if she was dead or alive.

Squinting at the first sun rays tipping over the faraway horizon to harden the deep wrinkles etching his forehead, he jerked his leg abruptly and the Triumph revved to life, racing through the gates. He only spared a glimpse on the side mirror to see Rick's hunched shoulders before squaring his, permitting the crispy spring breeze to whip his face, misty gaze transfixed blankly on the faraway horizon. Whether he was coming back or not, he had no idea.

xxxxx

_Rick shimmied a hand inside his pocket to fish out a feminine watch and Daryl's eyes drifted absently to the object, barely identifying what it was and what it stood for. He blinked then and sucked a shaky breath, his hand groping the inner cavity of his leather vest that harbored his precious pack of cigarettes before sliding it out and tucking one between his lips, focused reverently on delivering each movement as if they dictated a painstaking endeavor on their own. It took him four attempts to light it, flicking the lighter again and again and failing to maintain the flame. Four. With his growing agitation tiptoeing on the razor's edge, a tangerine snuff eventually fluttered, smoldering the tip of the tobacco rod into embers. Taking a drag, he relished the sensation of viperous nicotine flecks tearing through his lungs, poisoning and duping his system. He exhaled the smoke slowly through flaring nostrils and squinted back at the watch as his peripheral vision spotted Rick prowling on his every subtle reaction._

"_She gave me this before taking off," Rick muttered, an onslaught of conflicted emotions flashing through his eyes. Part of him hated Carol, part of him loved her. Part of him wished she never existed and part of him was internally squirming to get out and look for her. "A keepsake of some sort, I reckon… Something for me to-"_

"_Remember her? Is that what you think this is?" Daryl surprised himself when suddenly, out of nowhere, he cut off Rick mid-sentence with a bitter, drizzling acerbity chuckle. "That's the watch Ed gave her on their first anniversary. She'd been carryin' it around forever, talkin' about a chance to get rid of it the way that bastard deserved to." He was vibrating vehemently head to toe, words drawled out flatly, without indignation or belligerence as if the person across him wasn't worth the time or the energy for any of this. He brought the cigarette back to his lips and this time left it lodged there, taking in the quizzical dismay spreading across the ex-sheriff's features as the filter dampened in his mouth._

_Snagging the watch out of Rick's palm, Daryl took a step closer. "This ain't no gift, Rick. It's her royal 'fuck you' to you!" he sputtered, flaunting the threadbare wristband so close to the man's face that the gold-pleated frame almost grazed his nose as it bounced repeatedly back and forth. "Couldn't have said it any better. She leveled you with her shitty past and flipped you both. Bet she didn't spare you a glance before leavin', did she?"_

_Rick took a step back and craned his neck, chin up, jaw fixed. The fact that Daryl was aware of the back story and spot on Carol's derisiveness when he cast her off made him wonder how much he had missed during those long months of farming and introspection and interrelation disassociation. But he wouldn't budge, not now. "She did something horrible, indefensible, behind our backs," he chanted loudly the same mantra his brain was droning on and on like a broken record with a monotonous up and down nod to himself._

"_And you punished her by doin' the same," Daryl deadpanned, pinching the cigarette out of his mouth. He inspected it meticulously, like an exotic bird he had never witnessed in his life, watching the smoke spiral upward before it diffused and evanesced altogether. Then his gaze darted back to Rick. "Banishin' Carol wasn't your decision to make."_

"_She showed no regrets, no remorse," Rick argued heatedly. "She was cold!"_

_Daryl's eyes slit menacingly, the husky wobble of his voice dropping a full octave. "Like you are?"_

"_I didn't kill two people!"_

"_Oh, I know," Daryl cackled, shafts of sarcasm flogging the loaded atmosphere between them. "You've killed a lot more."_

_Rick had bolstered himself to face any of Daryl's possible reactions in the book. Daryl was Daryl; after a while, he was predictable and easy to decipher. Protective, brave and quick to act when threatened, shy and clammed up when teased, supportive and loyal when hard measures had to be taken, skittish and livid when cornered or hurt, as if he came with a manual. All these considered, gory fisticuff, berserk spree, blind rage, flared up temper were part of the deal –he expected them for the knee jerk reaction. Afterwards, a couple of days later, Daryl would reconsider, see his point, comply and take his side, because he'd have shifted from the hurtful situation to the 'measures had to be taken' one. Then, he'd reason with him. As the bickering progressed, though, the throbbing doubt that he had miscalculated the hunter clawed up, munching on his steadfast resolution. He didn't expect the countenance of bone deep, core-shuddering decrepitude from the person across from him, detonating in kindling puffs of air and spazzing snickers. He couldn't fathom what this broken chain-smoking meant, hence was clueless about where Daryl stood._

"_Karen and David were part of our group," he bit out as Daryl tossed the half-drained cigarette and shoved the watch inside his pocket, staking an unequivocal and non-negotiable claim on the object. Rick didn't demand it back. He didn't want to remember anyhow, just to forget._

"_Like Shane? Or everyone else for the matter? It never occurred to you that all the people you and I have wasted were somebody's family as well, did it?" Daryl retorted aggressively and swiftly lit another one, keeping his jelly-smashed knees and trembling digits in check. _

"_Karen and David were innocent."_

"_Like Michonne was when you decided to hand her off to the Governor?"_

_Fuming like a caged bull, Rick stormed into Daryl's personal space with no sense of danger, jamming his forefinger on the rock solid surface of his chest, accentuating emphasis stressing out his next words one by one. "They. Were. Part. Of-"_

"_The group," Daryl finished off for him with a bass drawl, holding his ground, unswerving like a well-rounded boulder embedded in the soil, staring Rick square in the eye with a lethal glare. Red. He needed red, pumping blood fueled by blind rage. He needed rage to propel him forward like a kick in the rear, to keep him moving, active, fierce and vicious. All he had was blank. Vacant, colorless, empty. Cold, like Rick; maybe like Carol. Cold, like the dread nestling in a bottomless pit right in the kernel of his existence. Cold; no, frigid, like the backwash of a tidal wave that has just broke upon the beach. Like fear and despair. "So was Carol."_

"_Tyreese would kill her," Rick wheezed, taking a step back. "He damn near killed me over nothing."_

"_What, are you high or somethin'?" Daryl snorted. "He punched you twice; you are the one who damn near killed him. Over nothin', yeah, I'll give you that."_

"_He'd kill her," Rick snarled stubbornly, dropping his pillaged gaze to the cigarette in Daryl's hand. That lifeless object had become the center of their small universe, demanding and capturing their heed correspondingly. They both orbited around it, drawn by a magnetic attraction that riveted them in prefixed places while it thinned out in an inescapable dwindling towards decay until nothing would remain but a bundle of ashes and dead substances. Just like the godforsaken world they gadded about. Just like his relationships with his beloved ones: Shane, Lori, Carol, Daryl. Just like the stranger staring back at him in his mirror. He wanted to veer off, instill in his mind that what he did, he did for Carol along with everyone else. He couldn't. Truth was that he had seen something in her, something oddly familiar and terrifying, a carbon reflection of his bad self, someone he wouldn't have around._

"_You really kid yourself with that bullshit?" Daryl regarded him with a cringe of pure revulsion, wondering which one of them he was so desperate to convince. "I could've handled Tyreese," he growled, wrath barely harnessed behind a blazing gaze._

_Vaguely aware of his bearings anymore, too spent to keep up with Daryl's counter-arguments, too sick that Daryl was unknowingly throwing at his face the same lines Carol had, Rick panted raggedly. In hindsight, he suspected he might have acted too fast, trespassing an invisible boundary by deciding Carol's fate single handedly and dumping her to the curb. But his fragile mental balance couldn't, wouldn't, afford a reassessment of his decision. If he mulled it over too much, if he found himself on the wrong, that by exiling Carol he had rejected the warped reflection in his mirror, his mindset wouldn't bear the blow. Not after everything he had undergone, not after his one-step-forward-two-steps-back transitions, he wouldn't have her there to remind him of himself. "Carol is a liability, she can't be trusted," he groaned._

"_And you can?" Daryl barked out. _

"_She's cold. Heartless."_

"_She's Carol!" Daryl yelled into his face, fists curling and unfurling, itching to direct a text book executed clout straight to Rick's nose, only to feel the cartilage smash against his knuckles. However, he held his murderous fit in tight reins. For one, Carl was watching from a distance, out of earshot but within field of vision. "Your son is the only thing stoppin' me from beatin' you to a pulp," he spouted._

_But this didn't even begin to cover it. There was more, so much more behind his inhumane effort to contain his explosive temper. He knew what was expected from him, take a few swings, go all redneck bravado. He wouldn't do Rick this favor, give him the carrot he needed to decoy the others, misguide them away from the forest and limit their gazes at the tree. There was an elephant in the room; Daryl wouldn't allow Rick to persuade the group to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. He wouldn't grant him a shiner, a broken nose, a couple of knocked in teeth, a swollen groin, not even a bruised stomach; nothing for Rick to parade around as indisputable emblem of his martyrdom. Not this time. If Carol was guilty, so was he, his rotten, misperceived leadership and the questionable morality he went by these days. _

_Rick choked up a gasp and lifted his hands in a pacifying gesture. "I did it for the group."_

"_You did it for you," Daryl sighed in defeat, exhaling a lungful of smoke, every speck of fight inside him ebbing and evaporating briskly. _

"_Yes!" Rick's mad cry cut through the silent prison yard as he pounded his chest. "For my children! My children! My family!"_

"_You ain't the only one with family around here," Daryl spat out indignantly. _

"_I didn't mean that," Rick murmured, threading his fingers through the unkempt hair of his skull. "We're brothers, you and I."_

"_My brother's dead," Daryl stated coldly._

_He felt it then. The gush of draft, waltzing haphazardly in a whirlpool of scattered reminiscence. The impression or feeling of having experienced something before, of being caught again in this same situation. A déjà vu, aka been there, done that in the hillbilly tongue-tied and far more inarticulate dialect. Every damn nonsense unraveling around him bore an astute sense of déjà vu. Back then, Rick was a complete stranger; right now, he was his best friend, a man he'd called kin up until ten minutes ago. Back then it was the camp at the quarry outside Atlanta; right now it was inside a godforsaken Georgian prison. Back then, it was after hunting; right now, it was after a supply run. Back then, he went apeshit; right now, he was numb. Back then, it was his brother; right now, it was… After all this time and he still hadn't come up with a single word to properly define what she was to him. _

_One difference, only pungently acute: Carol wasn't Merle. Whatever attenuating circumstances Rick had invoked to plead mitigation back then, Daryl saw none of them in this case. There were no excuses now for their twice in the row self-proclaimed leader, simply because the issue at hand was Carol. Carol was the game changer. He had forgiven Rick for Merle. He wouldn't for Carol._

"_That's twice you leave a person I care about out there, Rick." _

"_You all told me time and time again how much you wanted me to step up again. You more than anyone else." Words voiced gruffly, almost beseeching to lever the trampling encumbrance of the hatch named self-doubt. _

"_I offered you a chair in the council, not a throne," Daryl corrected bluntly._

_Rick dipped his head, scowling at his boots, his precarious composure quivering like a house of cards. So much for the firm foundations of his sanity. A wrangle and his confidence pulverized into a clutter of debris._

"_You wanted her dead, but you weren't man enough to put a bullet in her head," Daryl drawled, chucking another cigarette. "So you sent her out there to die alone, assurin' yourself that she ain't nothin' worth keepin' you and your precious conscience up at night. The least you can do is fuckin' admit it." This was his verdict, not just his indictment. In his mind, Rick had been trialed and found guilty of double standards, cruelty, premeditated murder and, above and most of all, hypocrisy. His verdict, whether the accused accepted culpability or not. His verdict and he delivered it with the same aloof coldness Rick had broken down his own. "Carol has twice the balls you do. She fucked up epically, but she faced it and took the shit about what she did without lies and pathetic excuses like you do."_

_Rick's eyes, weary and bleary, slanted down the cultivated soil, memorizing the ranks of ants in tow waddling under the hefty load on their backs as they encircled and crowded in the entrance of their dugout._

"_Would you have told me the truth?" Daryl asked defiantly. "If you weren't afraid that someday I'd stumble upon her or she'd appear outside the gate, would you have told me what really happened between you two?" _

_No, of course not. If Rick trusted for Carol to never come back... If he trusted her to give up on her newly adopted daughters for good… If he believed Daryl would never try to go back and double-check what had happened with his very eyes… If he thought himself capable of 'staging' something convincing enough to outsmart Daryl's shrewdness and not lead to his inevitable fallout… If all these premises were fulfilled, he would have probably claimed that walkers had gotten her in his watch and deal with those consequences. His confession rutted across his brows when he gazed up at Daryl._

"_Thought so."_

"_It'd be more merciful to believe her dead," Rick muttered, running an exhausted palm over the dappled-grey rings crowning the azure shadows of his gaze. "Would give you some closure."_

"_And you a free pass." Daryl nodded contemplatively for a few seconds, before shouldering past him, marching straight to Merle's Triumph with Rick hot on his heels. _

"_Daryl!"_

_There was no stopping him. In a flash, Daryl reached and straddled the bike, yanking free every time Rick moved to grab his arm._

"_I can't let you leave, Daryl!"_

"_I wasn't askin'__.__" _

"_Listen to me! You ain't thinkin' clearly. You need to-"_

"_Quit this patronizin' bullshit with me, Rick," he seethed, knocking away the kick stand. The key was already in the ignition. "Ain't your lap dog anymore." _

"_I need you here!"_

_Daryl adjusted on the seat and glanced up at the man next to him like he was seeing him for the first time. "I'm outta fucks about what you need anymore," he stated blankly, without emotion, as if refusing a slice of bread._

"_The group needs you. Think about the group!" Rick pleaded with him._

_Internally, Daryl scoffed. He couldn't believe that Rick cast the group card right in his face, as if he was the one abandoning them. Well played, but such a cheap move… When he spoke again, his tone was standoffish and detached, somewhat disinterested and completely frosty, millions icicles percolating the mellow bliss of the vernal daybreak. No enmity, no spleen, no anger, just denial of amnesty, irrevocable finality and renunciation of all atonement. _

"_Not this time." _

xxxxx

Once. That was the number of times he had gone to the ocean. Cape Fear, North Carolina. Merle had showed up unexpectedly the day Daryl turned eighteen, towing two motorcycles behind a wrecked truck. A curt nod was all it took for him to straddle one and join his brother in a five-day binge of nonstop booze, pot and unlimited stash of angel dust, countless hook-ups and one night stands with random whores or bleach-haired trashy chicks, with besmirched layers of make-up and puckered lips. And one single sober interlude of clarity: a short stay overnight in Uncle Brian's cabin. Merle overdosed and passed out face down on the armrest of a tattered sofa, too far gone down the drug addiction yoke, humiliating an already clammed and introverted Daryl to no end.

Uncle Brian had ushered him for a long walk in the beach. 'That's the slatch, boy, the lull between breaking waves, perfect time for launching a boat,' he pointed to a dazzled-eyed Daryl. Surging water, hissing as it bulged out and swelled over the surface, fleetingly soaring in a short-lived triumph of utter stillness and glory until the wind crept in to corrode its substance and melt the laced molecules away. And then the heartbeat was past it and the wave huffed out a distressed groan and curled in a roller before breaking into the frothy whitecap of raving spume with no other purpose or salvation than to advance to the shore.

He had seen the ocean once, but Cape Fear branded him for life. The slatch notion above all, more than the breathtaking landscape, the sea fury and whoosh of rushing water. That notion of drifting, oscillating aimlessly in a hiatus of phony serenity and a false sense of triumph only to be crashed on rocks by the wave towering behind. He was trapped in the slatch right at that moment. The first droves of events had crashed ashore and he was now drenching in a brewing buildup, seeking for some kind of release already blistering around him.

Daryl swayed his head to sequester the delirium in the backburner of his mind for later. Losing it now wasn't an option. He had a task to accomplish. He had to make sure she was fine and in one piece. He had to track her and bring her back to the prison whether people liked it or not. Hunting down a car was no cinch, not a triviality he could pull off without much trouble. Honestly put, it was next to impossible. Mere instinct in the hopes for it to guide him rightfully, which turn she'd take, which street she'd choose, like a blindfolded man blundering in the dark without a trail to pick up, without clues.

If she was smart, she would stray from the main road and follow a less beaten path first chance, considering the all sorts of bandits, criminals and rapists skulking in the shadows for passerbys, supplies and well-shaped, vulnerable feminine bodies. Swallowing the bile that bubbled up his throat, he saw the intersected lanes of a crossroad shaping afar, the first one in the direction Carol had driven off.

Adding throttle to the bike by twisting the grip of the handlebar, he cussed under his breath, cocked his ahead and allowed the wind filter relentlessly through every pore of his face. Despite the speed, time dwindled, conning him in an illusion of slow motion, when in reality he was flying like a bat out of hell. He remained vigilant, hyperactive and on edge, but felt slacked. Faster and faster and not nearly fast enough. He was making mistakes he couldn't afford. Speed was required in terms of hashing Carol's head start, but a hunter knew better than that. He risked missing tips, signs of her presence.

Finally reaching the crossroad, he squeezed the brakes vehemently, as if they were his worst enemy, almost flinging himself over the wheel. Three roads, three choices, thirty-three percent chances of success. His eyes stung, but he blamed the blinding sun. It was of paramount importance that he didn't screw this up. If she was being smart and clear-headed, she would have chosen the narrowest. He ignored the crippling emotion rampaging his chest and took a sharp left, thrusting the bike over bumps and waterlogged potholes. The absurdities he'd do for this woman, even wearing out the last thing that anchored Merle's memory in this world, the last object he possessed to remind himself that his brother had once upon a time truly existed, without a blink.

'Good girl,' he thought when the misshapen hint of a parked vehicle emerged in the distance.

She _had_ been smart and he _hadn't_ screwed up. He had found her and would bring her back, behind the safety of solid walls, and nobody, _nobody_ would have a say in this. They were a package deal, she and he.

Hope. Hope and feral ebullience blossomed in his gut.

But the closer he got the clearer it became that something was off. The wagon was parked amidst the road, all four doors and trunk wide open. No sign of a living soul around, no supplies left, yet the same vehicle Rick had described.

Daryl killed the engine and dismounted offhandedly letting the bike to topple, instantly shifting in full tracker mode as he squatted around the car.

Wide tire prints of wheels skidding on the pitted asphalt, coming to an abrupt standstill.

The Taurus had got flanked by two military type jeeps.

Daryl's ears perked up, hearkening for even the remotest sound, an overwhelming queasiness roiled his innards and the blast of vomit clamber up to his mouth. Once again, he gulped the tart taste down. Trudging heavy-footed to the side of the road, he gazed at the spot where the lofty wisps of dried hay were ridden roughshod.

That was her trail. Carol had sprinted for the woods.

Multiple male-sized boot prints on her tail.

Wading and elbowing the overgrown weeds out of his way, he covered a few feet and found himself almost groveling, frantically tapping and groping on rotten leaves and soggy twigs as he entered the tree line. Keen-edged branches scratched his face, shrubs chaffed his arms, the hindrance bouncing in his throat clogged up his airway and he eyeballed in horror the delineating pattern.

A hustle. At least three trails overlapping.

She had been outrun, tackled on the sedge-coated carpet of lush vegetation, crawled a few feet on the mud while her assailants watched.

She had struggled, resisted.

One man had tumbled on the ground, landed hard on his back; his head crashed, digging a puddle that possibly gave him a concussion.

Damn, she had put one hell of a fight.

Sophia's ponytail holder, the one Carol always wore like a bracelet, mucked up in slop.

Back stepping in a lopsided stagger, she had hit an oak trunk.

Two men scooted over to her.

And then she collapsed on the ground, probably punched out cold.

She definitely hadn't moved during the trek back to vehicles.

Two men had dragged her back to the front jeep as the wake of muddy, roach-stompers patches on the rural road indicated.

And then nothing.

The jeeps drove off and there was no way to track them down. Back to point zero.

"Carol!"

The scurrying sounds of the encompassing wildlife oozed, as if animals scampered to their lairs or solely hushed and halted, bowing their heads in awe and honor at their king's hollers, the indolent cicada rattle paused and everything stilled.

"Carol!"

Irrational and hopeless as it might be, he lingered fleetingly, anticipating a response he knew wasn't coming, eyes welling up when the echo of his own voice pierced through the uproar of his ears, reverberating deafeningly within the walls of a head ready to explode.

As his surroundings surrendered in a blurry haze, it hit him again. A déjà vu, another one. Two in a day made the sick joke of Carol's banishment so much more dramatic, tying up all the loose ends and scarce snapshots of his life. Him in the woods, crossbow strapped around his shoulders, shrieking a feminine name, searching for a missing person the discovery of whom had hauled up to the top of his priority list. Almost two years ago, it had been a matter of life and death for him to find Sophia. Somehow, no matter what he had done in the meanwhile, no matter how hard he had forced his eyes shut or how far he had run from the emotional turbulence Carol depicted, everything had once again zeroed in right there and right now in the triumphant culmination of an utterly ironic cosmic prank.

He started pacing the length between the Taurus and the Triumph, arms swaying laxly, scribbling abstract motifs in the air. What now? Where to now?

The adrenaline-fueled resolution that charged his limbs lapsed and wilted step by step until the frantic brunt of his gait devolved into an angled stumble. With a guttural rustle, his stomach jolted, cheeks puffed, knees buckled and he keeled over on all fours, puking fluids. Unfed as he was, it only made his retching even more abrasive while regurgitative spasms zapped his frame, all the contents spewing in waves until there was nothing left but gagging hacks and gasps for air.

It dawned on him then, when the visceral impact of another fiasco eased in effortlessly, when his fist balled and knuckles scalped at the gravel, that the slatch was long gone and the next wave had engulfed him in the liquid twister, smashing his body against ragged rocks. He had wished for a release, any release, to rivet the spontaneous combustion inside him and he was bestowed one; a fissure in his frazzled nerves and the reinforced dam ground under a suffocating outpour of whatever it was attacking him.

He rolled over his back and wept bitter tears of loss and remorse under the scorching sun, clutching Sophia's ponytail holder in his palm, legs stretched out. It cut deep this pain, it was unbeknownst. There was nothing left for him to do. Incapable of cropping up a plan B, he was deprived of the heavy artillery he possessed to compensate his emotional deadlock –action.

Same old loop, looking for a Peletier, again. Sophia, he had looked for her like his life depended on that. But Carol, he had looked for her _because_ his life depended on that. There it was, the truth, his truth, out in the open, sprinkling on the road teardrop after teardrop. But no one else to share it with.

Not this time.

* * *

**Thank you all for reading, you have no idea how much I missed writing Caryl! If you liked it, drop me a encouraging word. And this is a WIP, so I'm totally open to suggestions about where this story is heading!**


	2. Five Stages of Grief

**Hey everyone!**

**Thank you all for your love :) It means the world to me and the virtual hugs I'm sending you don't even begin to cover it! You just know how to make a girl happy!**

**To address the concerns I received about who the killer in this fic is. It's Carol. I don't like it, I don't even buy it and I'm nose deep in all sorts of conspiracy theories about her covering up for someone else (I'm looking at you, Carl and Lizzie). However, since this is how the show has rolled so far, I decided to keep that part and write a story where she's guilty. I'm stomping my foot on the ground and declaring flat out that she can come back from what she did (I'm furious at Rick's double standards that everyone gets to come back except Carol *cough*hypocrite*cough*) and her character is totally salvageable in my eyes. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't bother at all. Carol is my favorite character and this story aims at exploring her multi-layered personality, motives, reasons, mindset and give her a man who is worthy of her and can help her heal while healing him at the same time. So, don't expect any twists about the murders, this isn't the idea behind the story. I just thought I had to come clean with you so that you don't harbor false expectations.**

**I wish I could say more, but it's impossible to do so without spilling my guts about what lurks around the corner for our characters :)**

**Read on and enjoy!  
**

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"_They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite"  
― __Cassandra Clare__, __Clockwork Prince_

The day after Carol's banishment - Denial

"What do you think?"

Michonne looked up at him and then her eyes darted back to the ground. "Could be."

"Same tire print. Military type."

Nodding, she scooted up, hands on her waist. "What about the footprints?"

"Four males," Daryl bit out quickly, full-on his poker face, only the rippling hitch of a convulsed breath betraying his welter and restless trepidation.

"Shit," Michonne huffed out before willing her composure back in. Carol had never really stood a chance there, had she? Daryl's jaw was fixed and she averted her gaze on the road ahead of them to give him a minute. "Any of them familiar?" The question was loaded with a heavy subtext, conspicuous enough between the two persons that had hunted down the Governor, Martinez and Shumpert like rabid hounds long after they had lost all three trails.

"No."

"It can't be him," she said stubbornly, voice contorted into a crunch of doubt. "All this time I raked the state. He couldn't be so close."

"Sometimes it's easier hidin' in plain daylight," Daryl shrugged. "Truth is we know jack squat about who these scumbags are. All sorts of nutjobs out there. Whoever they are, they have her now."

Squinting back at him, Michonne chewed on her lower lip and dared the one question she knew he couldn't stomach. "Think she's still alive?"

"She was when they lugged her back in the cars," he muttered, addressing more himself than her. "Else, why bother? Plus no blood, no struggle marks after they caught her. Yeah, she's alive."

Michonne had always had a knack for human behavior. A sixth sense not sharpened due to vocation choice, just a natural trait of her personality. Rare were the occasions that she couldn't read between a person's lines right from the beginning. Daryl and Carol were both two striking exceptions in that golden rule, the former till only a few minutes earlier. What used to loom over as the infamous Daryl riddle, was now a terrified deer under a lion façade, nude and exposed before her, unraveled pathetically like a broken maze.

If the people who abducted Carol wanted supplies, they'd have scavenged the Taurus and kill her on the spot. Instead, they had taken her with them and even though that sounded like good news, Michonne knew better than that. Daryl knew better than that. To track Carol intact or even alive… Slim chances at the very best.

And Daryl was facing facts he wasn't ready to accept. He was grieving a loss and he was only at the get-go of a long journey… Denial. This wasn't happening, it couldn't be happening to him. First, Merle was left behind in Atlanta and Daryl stormed in a walker swamped building, retrieving nothing but a maimed limb from the roof he was shackled to. Shortly after, Sophia went missing and he clung to the pipe dream of locating her and fetching her back to Carol, only for the girl to stumble out of Hershel's barn as a walker a week later. Then it was Carol's turn to disappear in the tombs, presumably munched on by walkers, but that time his luck had miraculously taken a better turn, and he found her very much alive and breathing. Just a day after saving her, things got even better and Merle reintroduced himself in his life, all kicking and braying, good old bravado and potty-mouthed. And then he launched headfirst into the suicidal redemption crusade of taking out the Governor that ultimately claimed his life and the reanimated shell of his brother's corpse launched for Daryl's flesh. After Sophia, after Merle, Carol was the one person left in the world for whom Daryl didn't harbor a tart taste of fiasco. So, no. Carol hadn't vanished; she was missing, but not irrevocably. He would get her back, before something irreversible happened. He wasn't losing and wasn't failing to protect another person dear to him, not from the dead, not from the living. Not again.

Michonne looked back at Daryl who was now transfixed at some vacant point behind the tree line, frantically gnawing on his cuticle. He was silent other than the ragged breaths wriggling out his lips and she could almost hear the buzz of the wheels spinning in his head. "Want us to start right away?" At the end of the day, that was all this world was about; slim chances.

"_I_ am," he replied absently.

"And I'm with you," Michonne smiled. "You and me, just like the old days."

Inhaling sharply, Daryl turned to her. "Just to straighten things out here," he stated expressionlessly, talking business. "This ain't about huntin' down the Governor. It could or couldn't be him."

"I get it. It's a Carol search party," Michonne complied. "Works even better for me if we wind up killing two birds with one stone."

"Ain't no goddamn trail to pick," he cussed, obviously straining himself to tame the direness of Carol's predicament and hone in on the task at hand. "But that crap here? That was an ambush. She was smart enough to stay off road, but drove straight into the lion's den."

"We're less than a day behind," Michonne countered soothingly. "If we're lucky-"

"My best guess is that they have a camp somewhere," he went on in the same blunt drawl, cutting her off mid-sentence. "Or a bunker, some place safe. They have numbers, equipment, man power, time and patience to sit tight and wait. These people ain't no starvin' ramblers."

"Soldiers?"

"Probably," he grunted and then shook his head as if to stave off the sick images slithering inside without permission. A deep wrinkle lacerated his forehead and he swallowed hard the knot bouncing in his throat. "But we'll find her."

Michonne chinned up and gently slapped his arm with the back of her hand. He had turned to her after all; when everything was crumbing around him, Daryl Dixon had done the inconceivable –he had asked for help. A little denial wouldn't hurt any of them. "Come on then, tough guy. We're wasting daylight."

Stalking back to the trunk they were driving in, Michonne positioned herself behind the steering wheel. A few seconds later, the passenger's door slammed close and Daryl stared straight ahead through a slit of his eyes.

xxxxx

_Ten days after Carol's banishment – Anger_

"Enough," Michonne said firmly, towering over Daryl's slouched form. She wiped the blood-dripping katana off her pants and watched him trudge away heavy-footed and blood-cloaked to retrieve his arrows from rotten skulls sliced in half before she focused back on the victim of his latest rage eruption.

When they had run into the stray flock of dead limping towards them, Michonne and Daryl teamed up, fighting them off back to back, his bolts never missing bull's eye, her katana whizzing in air, cleaving necks. Until they were surrounded by a heap of sapless, dismembered corpses and one last, six foot tall walker in the rearguard of the flock lunged towards them. They could have sidestepped him without much fuss or taken him out with a single blow and Michonne was already halfway through lifting her sword when Daryl clutched her arm. 'He's mine,' he had sputtered and she noticed the switch flipping in his darkened gaze. Michonne stepped back and he weaved his way through the cluttered bodies with the dexterity of a quadruped predator, eyes narrowed and lethal.

He pawed and cracked the insatiable, viscous-drooling maws of the walker and then snagged a hatchet from the trunk of the car. The walker lurched forward, producing mouth-less sounds resembling snarls and growls as Daryl screamed at the creased face and knocked him flat on the ground. He instantly plummeted atop him, one knee plowing into the walker's stomach. The hatchet twirled in the air and chopped off both arms elbow high with two single strikes. Then the berserk slaughter feast started. Grabbing one ochre-tinged limb of the squirming form still swinging in front of his face, Daryl tossed the hatchet and unsheathed his knife with his free hand, every single sinew wobbling heatedly under layers of dirt and skin as his shoulder bobbed up and down, delivering consecutive, right to the hilt stabs in the walker's head. And then in the chest. And then in the bowels. And then everywhere all over again. A squelched face, a mass of blood, gunk, smashed limbs, organs and intestines spewed around were the remnants of a walker that had barely posed even the slightest threat to them. Of a walker mutilated, devoid of the lethal claws weapon, with almost complete mobility impairment. Messy, sloppy, with over the top redundant moves, so unlike Daryl. At the end, simply defying the purpose and saturating to overkill -the semantics behind everything neither obscure nor disregarded on Michonne's behalf.

His aggressive demeanor was gradually deteriorating. A trivial remark or an insignificant event sufficed to ignite one hell of a fit and a shitstorm of novel, colorful swears. He grew restless, muscles and brain working overtime twenty-four seven, toiling himself beyond comprehension, but he couldn't stay busy enough. Dead on his feet as he should be between searching for Carol, hunting their food, monitoring groups of survivors and dispatching walkers, eyes dented and bloodshot, engulfed in dappled-grey rings, he was hyperactive nevertheless. Restful sleep bordered on wishful thinking and he had forgotten the natural technicality of respiration, deep inhalation through the nose, steady expiration through the mouth; he was constantly panting, brewing in sizzling blood pressure.

Michonne knew the signs. He was plunging deeper and deeper into the second stage of grief. Anger. It wasn't fair. He had suffered enough. _She_ had suffered enough. They had both been through enough pain and suffering for ten lifetimes and finally found solace in the end of the world. And then this happened. There was no justice for Carol's alluded fate. But he knew who was to be held responsible. Rick. Daryl grew incensed every time Michonne would mention his name, incensed to the entire universe that this had ultimately really transpired to him and Carol. Again.

A flower seemed to have a soothing effect on him, his frazzled nerves and distraught mindset. He was oddly fascinated by the Cherokee rose bushes they happened to trek by, occasionally standing there zoned out, either gawking at them like they possessed the Holy Grail of knowledge, some hidden omen unfathomable to her, or hover above them, caressing the pliant, pink-tinted petals. Every once in a while, the corner of his lip would even twitch upwards, fluttering in a ghost smile that never lasted longer than a heartbeat. However, in times of extreme frustration, he'd make a full one hundred eighty, trampling the plant under the jagged soles of his boots or crashing the stems between his fingers. Michonne never bothered to ask, although she understood there was a secret meaning beyond her grasp there. Something about his behavior around the roses high-lighted it as too personal; his gaze and stance every time they came across a Cherokee rose screamed that no inquisition would get her an answer.

The jasper he had found during the medication run was another object snaring his unremitting attention. Hours and hours were dedicated to the sole purpose of him inspecting it closely as the stone toyed pinched between his fingers, filtering and radiating off the waltzing flames of a lantern or a fire, night hours when sleep evaded him and nightmares mocked his efforts until the first rays of sun would mount up the eastern ladder and he'd hoist the backpack over his shoulders again, despondent, resolved and furious.

They holed up in a deserted pawn shop in the middle of nowhere that evening and Michonne was keeping first watch. Herds sprouted up out of nowhere lately, active and gory, let alone the uncharted territory random encounters with other survivors constituted. Being just the two of them, they couldn't risk letting their guard down and Michonne stayed vigilant despite her somnolence, meticulously exploring their surroundings.

Not that her alerted state came in handy for Daryl. He was tossing and turning nonstop in his sleep, mumbling Carol's name along with incoherent words and swearing, until he jerked awake and gasped for air, drenched in his own sweat.

"You ok?" she asked without looking at him directly, prying on his reactions through the dim reflection the lantern light cast on the window glass.

Daryl heaved a few stabilizing breaths, vehemently chaffing his eyelids with the heels of his hands. "Yeah."

"Carol?"

His head snapped up. "What?"

"You said her name," Michonne muttered and squinted at him. In lack of any response, she kept talking. "She's strong, you know. She can handle herself until we get there."

"Stop sayin' it like you don't believe it!" he seethed, a lethal gaze stabbing daggers on her face.

"I do believe it," Michonne lied, knowing that any attempt to reason with him would fall on deaf ears. He wasn't ready to abandon the quest, he wouldn't no matter what she said. The truth was vain there and since he was dead set on his mission, he needed all the help and encouragement he could get. "I spent months out there alone."

"She ain't like you," Daryl rasped and unsteadily scrambled up off the floor, plopping down in the chair at the other end of the window. He lightly banged his head on the wooden slats of the frame. "And she ain't alone."

His hands were already groping the denim pockets for cigarettes and Michonne dodged the pungent remark about Carol's 'companions', opting to veer the conversation off to a happier place. "What is she like?" she asked guardedly. "I never got to know her well."

"She's… Um…" Daryl started and then floundered and paused, wrestling with fleeting words and sentiments impossible to be verbalized. A cigarette was midway his mouth, but then his arm soared and the filter wandered back to his knee where it started an indolent, tipping dance. Unruly strands of overgrown hair were veiling his gaze, but a dreamy twinkle flickered through a crevice. "She's Carol."

"Oh, come on, throw me a bone here," Michonne exclaimed urgently, feigning a pout. "I put my neck out there for her every day, might as well know who I'm risking my life for."

Daryl lit the cigarette and took a long drag, pondering on days gone by as smoke flared and dissipated, crowning his face. When he spoke again, the crooked smile of bittersweet memories kicking in droves was lingering across his lips. "Merle liked her," he whispered softly.

"I'll be damned," Michonne laughed whole-heartedly, breaking one of her rarely-viewed toothy grins and Daryl mimicked her, chuckling in amusement. "Merle didn't like his own guts."

"He liked Carol. He said she was a tiger in a mousy costume," Daryl droned on with a slow nod as the smirk spread like a spider web, crinkling the corner of his eyes. "He was _impressed_. Called her a late bloomer and Merle was never one for compliments."

"That's all he called her?" she fed the banter, positive that this light mood was destined to be short-lived. "I mean the woman has one fine ass. Bet your brother wouldn't miss _that_!"

"He wouldn't now, would he?" he snorted and rolled his eyes. "You know what he liked the most about her though? At first he thought he'd boss her around like it was nothin', but Carol wouldn't take his shit. The bastard had a soft spot for women who didn't buy his pick-up lines. Maggie and Beth wouldn't go within ten feet of him, but Carol just…" A simple blink and the musing shattered, unuttered words flailed away and the sullen expression was briskly redeemed in his face.

There was an acute sting of heartbreak and pent up ache in the way he could muster no words on his own to describe Carol and channeled the point of view of the person he cherished most in the world. The subtle nuances of a torment piercing so amply that Michonne nearly winced, afraid to peek beneath the surface. She leaned forward and shot him a mischievous look. "I'm calling it now. Next time I see this pixie spitfire, it'll be in a whole new light."

Daryl said nothing in response, drifting back to the mystical Siren lure the jasper was humming to him.

Aware of his turmoil and the noise of grinding teeth as he fell silent, she didn't push any further. She hadn't missed the bond Daryl and Carol shared back in the prison. But she had missed that it was _that_ kind of bond, now wondering if he had missed it himself, if he hadn't been and still wasn't ready to admit feelings more profound than friendship and kinship. During the long months he and Michonne had spent alone tracking down the Governor, they had talked about many group members, except for one. Daryl would bring up Rick, Carl, Hershel, Beth, Maggie, Glenn or anyone else every now and then, but never Carol. Never. And if it was Michonne the one to mention her name, he'd never reiterate it. In the six months preceding her banishment, Michonne had never heard him say Carol's name. Now he did. More and more often.

Surveying him with a scowl of grave concern, she motioned to the stone in his hand. "Thought that was for Mrs. Richards."

"She didn't survive the flu." Daryl shrugged. "Hell, almost no one did."

He started wheezing again, getting all riled up over how Rick kicked out Carol for being a menace to the group among other excuses, when most of the infected died anyway, despite the huckleberry broth or the medication. Of all the things driving him bonkers these days, that topic was the one to push him over the edge.

"Every gem stone has a meaning," Michonne coaxed again to change the subject. "Any chance you know what jasper stands for?"

Daryl spared her one single glance before his eyes skimmed back to stone. "A bunch of things," he muttered huskily. "Mainly, it's a nurturin' stone, for healin' and comfort. It protects the traveler, too, brings beauty in life and… clusterfucks." His voice trailed off and Michonne regarded him sadly. There was no undertone, no innuendo there. Everything was explicit and eerie, the nurture, the healing, the traveler, like scalpels stowed under the whipping, relentless, fluorescent light of a hospital.

"Sleep," he ordered when a sudden shudder zapped through him, nostrils flaring. "We're movin' at dawn."

xxxxx

_Twenty-five days after Carol's banishment – Bargaining_

"We're gettin' at it all wrong," he rumbled, putting out a cigarette and quickly tucking another one between his lips, eyeing Michonne through a nebula of smoke. "It makes no sense for whoever grabbed her to drive all the way down here. This area was densely populated. Why choose to stay somewhere swamped with walkers? We should've never come here. Tomorrow I say we head back here," his calloused fingers roved over the spread map, "where we were two days ago. Start from there."

Michonne swatted closer and inspected the delineating trajectory with a countenance of startling confusion. "At least let's check out this place before going back," she tried, pointing a spot on the map. "Make sure we have everything covered here."

"No," he growled, glaring at her. "We're wastin' time."

She didn't question him, never raised the parameter that walkers roamed around in herds and never dwelled in a place. He knew it all anyhow and they had already gone over the same argument more times than she could count. Chances were that tomorrow he'd change his mind again. And the day after again. And then again. For as long as their search dragged fruitlessly, he'd go on doubting the yesterday decisions leading them to another dead end, forever bargaining with luck and almighty powers, negotiating the actions that would show him the way to Carol's whereabouts. It was the third stage of grief after all.

Bargaining –maybe it was his fault, really. Maybe he was doing everything wrong. Carol was out there alone, probably suffering, possibly or potentially dead, and he couldn't locate her. So he kept straining them both harder and harder, changing strategies, plans and methods back and forth, moving in circles, reexamining places already thoroughly scrutinized, ranting, raving, steaming and quailing, not heeding to rational advices. He was past sheer anger now, bartering and haggling endlessly for a price, for whatever it took.

Instead of squandering his energy in futile overkills and petty bickerings with her, he boiled in a foreboding, bottled up muteness, immersed in his thoughts. Every night, cigarettes were quenched one after the other in a pile, while Daryl stooped over the tattered map, scowling in absolute concentration, grumbling and swearing indistinctly under a tobacco-stenched breath. He was unstable, something inconspicuous quaking down to his core. And then he'd start babbling out of nowhere about another idea, a cure-all epiphany that would steer them inexorably to Carol. Only most of these ideas were old and doomed, already proven wrong via trial and error, and the panacea never revealed herself. Michonne knew the drill, already been down that path herself. Daryl believed that finding Carol was solely and utterly up to him and all he had to do to succeed was to make one right decision. However, this one right decision kept slipping away and the more he was failing the more all his efforts rounded up to nothing other than dragging himself deeper into the rabbit hole.

At least he never violated the last term of their pact. For every week spent out in the wilderness, as dismayed and wrecked as he might be, he still allowed her to drive them back to the prison for a couple of days. He never honored Rick with a word, even when the sheriff was addressing him directly, but hunted deers and squirrels in the woods to stock the group with a feeble meat supply. He still cared about these people, and these people were the last chain anchoring him to the real life rattling on around them.

With a curt nod, Michonne lied down and snuggled in her sleeping bag. They were in this together, but the final direction was up to him. His quest, his call.

xxxxx

_40 days after Carol's banishment – Depression_

It started when he stopped telling Carol's name and settled with the aloof she/her. Then he ran out of ideas and plans and the parroted down to a tee map remained folded in his back pocket and so did the jasper. Then he refrained from eating and sleeping altogether until nodding off wherever he sprawled. He seemed older, as if he had fast-tracked decades of hardship, misery and mincing agony over weeks, the thin wrinkles of his face dipped into curved, permanent grooves. He lost weight but was more toned than ever. Where once black rings divulged lassitude and battering insomnia, now two sagging bags enveloped a frozen gaze devoid of life. The light brown hue of his sideburns had rinsed away in a grey tint, matching the same color mops of hair that had lately spread, tangled up with chestnut ones across his scalp.

Depression –sometimes, despite his grim determination, he had to clench his jaw and shore himself off the ground with great exertion, groan to force one foot in front of the other. And then these random days propagated and finally became canon, their daily routine. It was that bitch, hope, kindling inside him that was now sputtering and dying out with every passing hour, every sterile search and barren effort. Stealthily, yet systematically, that wilting hope he was so desperate to snatch and cling to with everything he had even when the light at the end of the tunnel snuffed out, was bringing him down on his knees. Deep down he knew it was pointless, but he still was in no position to make peace with the impasse.

Strewing the meat chunks in his bowl, Daryl was staring blankly at the blazing flames before him, immersed in a gloomy, spaced out disassociation as he normally did these times, day in day out.

"You done there?" Michonne pointed to the intact bowl and he handed it over to her without as much as a single word.

"Everything alright?" she tried again and extracted a half nod from an otherwise statue still frame. Dumping the bowl on the sedge-coated forest blanket, Michonne bit her lip impatiently for a few seconds. "We won't go far like this," she said. "You need to eat and get some rest. You're running on fumes."

"I'm fine," Daryl mumbled, picking on the hairband around his wrist.

"You don't look _fine_," she bristled. "And you stink like a ferret. No wonder even walkers won't come anywhere close to us."

"What's your problem?" he asked, no speck of fight in the low drone sprinkling defeat.

"I don't want you to get us both killed," she asserted pointedly. "You're no good to Carol like that."

"I ain't no good to her no matter what," he breathed so faintly she almost missed it.

It was driving her nuts this complete shutdown. Never one for idle chit chat and small talk herself, she still couldn't bear this bone deep unresponsiveness to everything happening around them. Granted that he refused her even a crumb to start a conversation, she just spilled it, considering no danger, just anticipating a reaction, any reaction. "Why do you think she did it anyway?"

The forbidden interrogation worked its magic and he finally tilted his chin, peering over the prattling fire at her direction. She was aiming for a glaring contest, something to spark his spirit, but all she received was the hollow look of derisiveness. "Protection is the key word behind her every motive."

Locking eyes with him, two proficient gladiators crossing their swords, vying for dominance, Michonne poked him more. "She killed two innocent people."

"Thinkin' she was protectin' the rest of us," Daryl deadpanned, reciprocating the hard look. "Served her well."

Giving up badgering him in ways she was sure were much more painful than he allowed his glassy gaze to mirror, Michonne bowed her eyes first and ran an exhausted palm across her face. "You should cut Rick some slack, you know. Can't blame him for what she did."

"I don't blame him for what _she_ did. I blame him for what _he_ did," he declared flatly. "If it had somehow worked, stopped the flu, he'd be fine with it, murder or no murder."

"You're too hard with him," she pleaded. "He's struggling, just like everyone does."

"Too hard?" Daryl huffed bitterly and the throbbing emotion behind the barb made Michonne miss the days he used to lash out at her for a dropping leaf or a bird chirping loudly. "Too hard? He's still alive and behind the prison walls, ain't he?"

"We're dog-tired. Tomorrow we're heading back to the prison. Have a shower, get our shit together," she announced conclusively after a few minutes of loaded tension between them, an adamant finality ringing in her tone, no leeway for diplomacy or compromise.

Daryl dismissed her by lowering on the ground and turning his back to her as she smothered the dying embers.

An open wound he was, top to bottom, all bleeding, all raw pain. Avalanche of stabbing lances and viscerally jarring throes. It was fierce this pain, punctuating, springing from his kernel and worming a crawlway into his mind until his senses slacked. Impossible to be localized, it simply hurled blazing flames in every single cell of his body, prevailing inch by inch, rendering him ineffective. No comfort, no consolation, no healing.

Michonne sighed and averted her gaze from his back, scanning their bearings for imminent threats. One day, reality would clobber him and he'd come to terms with the mere fact that Carol had just vanished in shards of smoke and that he had picked up a battle he couldn't possibly win, that this holy war he was clashing against odds and common sense, against gods and demons was fizzling out. Ultimately, that all this –_all_ this, the pain, the despair, the agony, the self-loathing- were like a tuxedo rehearsal for the aftermath, for the day he'd be ready to flip the page to the next and final chapter of grief, i.e. acceptance.

Then he'd withdraw in his ivory tower even more, licking his wounds, clustering and gluing his broken parts one by one. And when the remnants of who he was were all stitched together, recovery would start. That was how things rolled now. If duct tape couldn't fix it, then one hadn't used enough duct tape. Duct tape held the world together nowadays.

Or so she hoped.

xxxxx

_Fifty-five days after Carol's banishment_

Wrestling to force her scattered ruminations into a meaningful order, Michonne laced her fingers and drew an inward breath, permitting the words to claw out tranquilly, yet sternly. "You know, if _you_ haven't chewed my mind off that that asshole's trail went cold long ago and I'm missing a real life back in prison, I'd probably still be after him. So, I'm only gonna say it because you had the guts to spit it out in my face when I needed to hear it. And nobody needs some kind of intervention more than you do right now."

Squaring his torso and straightening his back, Daryl lit a cigarette, bracing himself for a bill he evidently knew was coming due sooner or later, avoiding her intense stare.

"What are we doing out here, Daryl? There never was a trail to begin with. It's been almost two months and we're stomping around on our feet."

"You know your way back," he grunted, gazing up at her.

"This is not about me," Michonne explained, dropping her cards on the table. "I get it, ok? How hard it is to have people just- just vanish one day. No goodbyes, no nothing."

"You know shit," Daryl bit out. "You chose to walk away from Andrea and she chose to stay behind. You know shit!"

"Fair enough," she acquiesced. "But, unless you have some sort of crystal ball you're hiding we got nothing to locate Carol. And truth is we don't even know if she's alive."

"No body, no funeral," he rasped throatily, voice warped into a sough, airway clogged up. "Ain't visitin' an empty grave again."

"And that's all you got…" she hummed, more like a statement than an actual question.

As he spoke his voice was gruff, maybe sharpened with an inimical razor for her castigation and loss of faith. "Good enough for _me_."

She was prodding for a sign of the fifth stage of grief, acceptance. She found none. Instead of moving forward, he was receding back to denial. "That's pretty close to what I said about the Governor once," Michonne argued. "And you called me obsessed back then."

"You were out for blood," he retorted evenly, lips pursed in a firm line. "It ain't the same with her."

Narrowing her eyes, she opened her mouth and hesitated for a moment before speaking, contemplating on the question shadowing them, wondering if he could say it out loud for a change. "What is it like with her?"

She watched as his features stretched outlandishly and morphed into a beasty mask, reflexively reaching for her katana. "What?" he barked, stirred and charged with sheer animalistic instinct. "You wanna talk about feelings now? Make it all about-? Screw you!"

And back to anger –his safe house.

"Simmer down, tough guy," Michonne muttered, holding his murderous glare defiantly. "I'm only trying to help here."

As debility eased her lane back in, Daryl dragged himself on the cabin's table and spread the map, propping heavily on splayed arms. "She's out there somewhere," he chanted the mantra. "I try hard enough, I'll find her."

A fast downhill to denial and then clambering up to bargaining. The usual, typically regressive loop, gadding in circles and zigzag courses that eventually scribbled a dispersed, shapeless sketch. Michonne knew. She felt for him. She felt for Carol. She couldn't help either.

"Look, you wanna go back? Knock yourself out," he said without turning to face her. "You've already done enough. Just don't ask me to quit."

And back to depression peppered with a smidge of suppressed anger.

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe all wounds couldn't be healed. Maybe time didn't cure everything.

"Nah, I'm in for the long haul, so you just have to grit your teeth and bear with me," Michonne offered. "Guess it's a good thing I've always liked camping in summer despite all those horror movies with dumb chicks baiting themselves to get cleaved. I thought I'd be smarter than that anyhow. Turns out I really am." When her joking attempt educed absolutely no answer, she ambled next to him. "So, what's the plan for tomorrow?

* * *

**Hope I did a decent job describing Daryl's grief through Michonne's POV. She's a very insightful woman and I do believe she'd help him in his search. Do you hate me already? And where the heck is Carol?**

**If you liked what you read, drop me an encouraging word. If you didn't, constructive criticism is always welcome.**


	3. Scarred

**Hey everyone!**

**As usually, thank you so much for your kind words! I hear everything you say, trust me, I do and will try my best to give it to you :) A special shout out that I've already neglected twice to send goes to Peta2 for her invaluable help and the great honor of being both my friend and my beta.**

**One single word for this chapter: Carol!**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

"_In my experience, when a woman's cruelty is combined with love and devotion, it is almost always without exception an act performed not out of treachery, but as a painful self-sacrifice for the good of her beloved, to obtain for him a future bounty where he would not know how to obtain it for himself, or have the courage, patience, or foresight to obtain it. Womankind always seems to be able to see a dozen steps into the future, far ahead of what men are able to see. And they have strength where we do not."  
― __Roman Payne__, __The Wanderess_

The so-called infirmary was a makeshift installation within a trailer at the north end of the camp. Nothing spectacular or exquisite, nothing even remotely close to contemporary medicine and health services, just stocked up with whatever they could scavenge during raids. Painkillers, gauges, thread for sutures, needles, plastic gloves, a fair amount of antibiotics and vitamins, sterilizers, ointment, multiple scalpels and a few anesthetics. Their last entrances were the IV bags dangling from the overhang in the corner –product of her apprenticeship next to Hershel and Dr. S. Modest, but it helped them get by.

Carol was pacing the full length of the infirmary, panting and quivering like a caged tiger. She didn't even know she was still capable of such powerful, overwhelming feelings anymore. Having lived the last three months completely innocuous, tethered and saturated in a perpetual lukewarm emotional state in which all possible events and outcomes seemed too trite to jiggle any kind of zest in her gut, this abrupt onslaught of conflicted zaps belting through her thrust her into overdrive. Chest heaving, teeth gritted, finger joints cricking nervously beneath her thumbs, she waited on burning coals for what seemed like forever until the rusty hinges screeched open and the much anticipated person stepped in.

"Why didn't you tell me that you were part of his group?" she hissed, as soon as the door clicked behind him. "Why did you bring him here?"

The man hushed her with a forefinger pressed on his lips and moved closer, flinging the rifle off his shoulder and propping it up against a cupboard. "Keep your voice down," he urged. "He has two women and a lil' girl under his wing. You really expected me to kick them out?"

Carol didn't budge, wagging her finger in the space between them. "When your men hauled me here, you asked for honesty. I gave you that. I told you the truth about me, my group, why I was kicked out. I didn't even try to victimize myself. And all this time you knew that-" Suddenly she stilled and paled, jaw hanging agape as a wave of unsolicited knowledge whooshed in. Incoherent noises waned on the tip of her tongue before forming into meaningful phrases and her raised arm fell laxly by her side. "Oh, God…" she gasped and shuddered head to toe. The trailer was spinning as the enclosed space crashed into her and dizziness claimed her.

A masculine hand reached out to assist her but she yanked away, banging her hip on the counter's corner and staggering a couple of steps backwards until she braced herself against the narrow closet. "Axel? Andrea? The prison attack?" She chocked up, wheezing labored breaths that never filled her lungs, gaze transfixed on the man she was staring at like a stranger. "You were with _him_ the entire time!"

Martinez remained rooted to the spot, brows etched in meditation and grave discomfort. He had reverently avoided that revelation for almost three months in a row. When he had returned from the perimeter check to find Mitch torturing her, carving her face with a stiletto, he took the interrogation up onto himself. The detailed disclosure stomped him stupid. She gave away everything –her cold-blooded double murder, her undeniable culpability, her banishment. Way more than she ought to, way more than he'd ever be in a position to find out unless a snitch spilled the beans, way more than it'd be smart on her behalf to confess, if she was seeking refuge. And then nothing. When questioned about her former group, their leader, their location, their numbers, her lips knitted up, refusing to spare even the tiniest of details. Mitch threatened to chisel her head to bottom and she cackled, inviting him to take a look at her stomach. Martinez had winced at the sight of cigarette burns and belt marks across the skin. Then Mitch altered his bullying tactic and told her he'd rip her flesh off her bones, to receive a provocative 'Take your time' deadpan on her behalf. Cut a long story short, Martinez was hands down impressed by that woman's cold, self-defying pragmatic honesty; she valued horseshit more than her own life. Had he not intervened once again, Carol would have become the subject of unintelligible ordeals.

He had only posed a single term to her: No dead weight in his camp. She had countered that she was perfectly capable of fending for herself and providing for the group, setting the bar high enough. Only she lived up to her allegations less than a week after, when Martinez was carried back by his men with a broken leg, two fractured ribs and one nasty dog bite on his stomach, courtesy of a goddamn run where bad luck blew out of proportion, snowballing everything. He had saved Pete by a hair, but exposed himself to the covetous fags of the animal. The woman knew nothing about self-promotion, hadn't said a word about how much of a skilled caretaker she was as if impervious to the fact that her medical knowledge would ram her upwards the ranking scale and render her an invaluable asset. Up until the moment she elbowed herself to his slumped, bleeding form and saved his life that was.

During the long weeks of his recovery, the two of them spent many hours together, her tending his wounds, him trying to decipher the mystery before him. She gained his respect and trust effortlessly and the acceptance gradually became mutual. They mused over humanity, morality, survival, codes, heinous crimes committed in the altar of self-preservation, the sacrifice of some for the greater good. Without revealing anything too specific about their background history, they spoke of guilt, mistakes and penances, about wooing consciences, about wrongs that couldn't be undone. That's how it happened. One night, speaking about her ousting, Carol said 'Rick'. It was a minor slip, a name half-mumbled. Normally, he wouldn't even notice, but a switch flipped at the sound of it. As days passed lazily, she mentioned that her former group had taken in people from a nearby village when their crazy leader disappeared and he pieced the bits together. She didn't remember him, probably never laid eyes on him, just like he hadn't.

And Martinez believed in second chances, believed that maybe they got to come back from the things they'd done; he couldn't afford it any other way. If not, how would he get out of his bed every morning? He believed she deserved one herself. The group needed her and he wanted her there. So he never said anything about their previous encounters. And now everything went to shit.

His eyes flicked back to Carol who cupped both sides of her face, a haunted mien obfuscating every inch of it. "Oh, my God… Glenn and Maggie… You-"

"Merle Dixon brought them in, I had nothing to do with that," he interrupted her rant solemnly, yet defiantly. "For all I knew, a bunch of people snuck into Woodbury shortly after, armed to the teeth and started shooting at us. The Governor said they were intruders wanting to take over Woodbury and that Merle betrayed him, teamed up with Michonne and knifed his eye out. He was the walking proof of his slanders, for fuck's sake! Next thing we know, the Dixons are in the arena and our people are dropping dead again. Children died that night, Carol!"

"Did _you_ kill Merle?"

"I was following orders. I didn't know. I thought I was protecting people in Woodbury."

"Did you _kill_ him?" she bit out tersely, two slender veins throbbing erratically across her temples.

"I was the one to nab him, handed him over to-"

"And Andrea? You knew about Andrea, too?"

Martinez cringed and nodded.

"Oh, God," Carol breathed goggle-eyed, still unable to wrap her head around this fresh, unforeseeable plight. "You were his henchman, the Latino guy everyone described."

"Not until after Merle ditched us."

"Why did you keep following him?"

Fazed by her uncompromising attitude, her trenchant, back-to-back questions and the tooth-edged callousness of the normally velvety timbre of her tone, Martinez crouched heavily on a chair and furrowed his chin in both hands, regarding her sawing at the brittle foundations of their hard-earned friendship. "He conned me, Carol," he stated level-headedly, the southern drawl of his explanatory attempt kinking in a warped plea for understanding.

Scoffing, she rolled her eyes at him. "Of course he did," she jibed.

"Why are you so floored about it?" Martinez protested indignantly. "He conned me and everyone else back in Woodbury. You knew the backstage from the get-go, but we never got a peep behind the curtain. He tricked us, Carol! Merle, Andrea, me, everyone! All we saw was that the man ran a place and kept everyone alive. Sure we did some awful things in the process, eliminated threats, but who hasn't? From where we stood, our community was attacked by your group. I didn't know the truth. None of us did. And I thought I was protecting them the entire time. How is that so different from what your men did for you?"

The need to come clean and still be understood and respected was beyond him. Normally, he didn't give a rat's ass about what people thought of him. He had a group of thirty-three to protect, a routine to forge and for as long as he kept things moving he could overcome a sporadic contempt and some bad blood. Peace with demons came with a toll he was willing to pay. But Carol was a different case. He wanted her to think highly of him. "I only figured who the guy really was and what he was capable of when he took out all our men. He shot them one by one and all Shumpert and I could do was watch like it wasn't even happening. We ditched him that same night."

Regarding him coldly, soaking up everything the man she owed her life to said like a sponge, Carol pushed more. "Why didn't you kill him?"

Martinez pawed his skull and inhaled sharply. When his eyes slanted back at her, a cascade of emotion flashed through them. Ire mixed up with guilt, determination with remorse, fear with hope, everything woven intrinsically in a deadlock. Only he wasn't apologetic anymore. He had done what his place and duty dictated, nothing more, nothing less. "He's saved my ass more times than I can count," he grunted. "I couldn't bring myself to put a bullet in his head. It's called _loyalty._"

At the sound of the pungently articulated word, Carol bristled, sucking in a huge amount of air in a wrenching effort to contain her overflowing resentment. It was a loaded word, a diction choice meant to challenge and hurt. But a lecture about loyalty was redundant here. She knew loyalty, knew at what extremes it hurled people, knew the cost it ushered. After all, loyalty had been her ultimate downfall. Loyalty, love and unswerving devotion. Motivated and driven from these sentiments, she had put her soul in auction and she earned the ultimate rejection for that, being dishonored, unwanted and disdained by the very same people she sacrificed herself for. She wasn't just rejected for her actions, she was rejected entirely as a human being. For Rick and surely for everyone else too, her name would be tossed to oblivion, a black page in the group's memoirs.

Loyalty had armed her hand and empowered two lethal stabs. Loyalty had morphed her nurturing nature into a killer. Loyalty was the reason restful sleep permanently evaded her, the reason her retinas chaffed with images of Karen and David every time her eyelids drooped. As much as she chanted to herself that it was a mercy kill, that they were already choking in their blood and there was no coming back from that stage, deep down she avowed that it was more than she could afford to acknowledge. She had snapped, she had lost her mind, blind panic and trampling mental pressure had overwhelmed her and she had done something inconceivable to protect the group. Something desperate and stupid, because they were all already exposed to the virus. Something set in stone that she couldn't take back when she came around. Loyalty was the reason she perished everything, the spring of all her recent sufferings, the slap that proved definitively how love could trigger death.

And the man who had been lying to her for three months straight was preaching about loyalty like it was a notion incomprehensible and alien to her? Like she hadn't already paid the price for being too loyal? She didn't even have Daryl anymore, her luminous, guiding star through the pitch black darkness. She had inherited two girls and she was bereft of a chance to take care of them, protect them the way she failed with Sophia, watch them grow and thrive. She had nothing left. Absolutely nothing. Zero. Nada.

And there had been something depressingly liberating in that bleak nothingness. Nothing to wait for, hope for, live for, die for. Nothing. Just endless possibility materialized into nothing tangible, casting a numbing indifference in its wake. Until now. Now that she had a purpose again, an ideal, something set ablaze in her stomach. She would never bribe her way back like that, she knew. There was nothing she could possibly do to regain their love and trust. She didn't deserve it anyhow. She endorsed her punishment. And she didn't care. She didn't need their forgiveness, she needed to save them. She could still save them and that was enough for her.

Straightening her torso, Carol showered Martinez with the recalcitrant ferocity of her insubordinate gaze. "Michonne has spent months looking for a whiff of him. She's wasting her life trying to track and kill him. And Daryl…" All it took, after all these months of refusing to think about him and his reaction to her actions, his disgust, his condemnation, all it took was for the breathless sigh of his name to wriggle out of a pair of trembling lips, flouting her volition or better judgment, and her heart started pounding against her ribcage, walloping in frenzy as if it was ripe to tear her chest open and squirt outside.

_Daryl_. She knew he hated her, probably more than everyone else, and she was certain beyond doubt that he'd never forgive her, that he had been relieved to return from his run and find her nowhere around the moment he learned what she had done. She knew he had stood behind Rick, reaffirmed his decision, even soothed his second thoughts if he had any. Daryl's code was cemented, not malleable, never maneuvering to fit his whims. She was dead to him and not even worthy of a tear. If she had ever doubted that for a split second, she would have waited for him right there, on the same pavement Rick locked her out of the car and dumped her like trash. But she had driven off, because she knew this time he wouldn't understand, this time he wouldn't come.

Things weren't exactly similar to her, though. Maybe she didn't hold her own life in great prestige, but Daryl, Lizzie and Mika were an entirely different story. Carl, Beth, Maggie, Glenn and Hershel too. Tyreese, of course, whom she injured so deeply, earning his rightful hatred. Sasha as well. Pretty much everyone. And Michonne; Michonne who she liked and valued so much without ever getting to truly know her. Even Rick… But Daryl, Lizzie and Mika first and above them all. In a heartbeat, one hand was sheathing her Bowie while the other cocked open the gun's chamber, counting the bullets inside. "I have to go back, warn them, tell them he's here."

Her legs charged forward and Carol was already storming to the door when Martinez shot up, blocking her exit with his broad constitution. "And then what?"

"What do you mean then what?" she slurred bewildered, fighting in vain to sidestep him. "Then, then-"

His hands wrapped around Carol's arms, fingers plowing deep into soft flesh until she was forced to gaze up at him. "Then shit hits the fan and we're at war again," he drawled slowly. "That's what you want? More people to die?"

"Nobody's gonna die except him!"

"How are you so sure? What if he kills your friends first?"

"No, no," Carol huffed out, gagging from lack of air in her body, shaking her head in absolute denial. "You don't understand…"

"And even if they cap him first, you think they'll let the rest of us live in peace?"

"The people in the prison aren't assassins," Carol yelled in his face, mindful to keep the volume of her voice in check despite the haze engulfing her.

"What about me?" Martinez sputtered, playing his last chip, livid and hurt. "I was part of everything. A big part. You want me dead, too?" Realizing that his forceful clinch was hurting her, he released her but Carol held her ground, squaring her petite figure before him, two cornered animals panting in each other's face. "Michonne is dead on revenge," he went on, almost imploringly. "Your words, not mine! And I'm pretty sure the same goes for Merle's brother. And you said Rick took in people from Woodbury there. For all they know, I'm the one who terrorized them to stay behind when they tried to flee the damn place. For all they know, I'm as guilty as _he_ is for their dead ones and you know what? I probably am! Say they bust in the camp wielding their guns and start shootin' around. Then what?" He was shaking, rambling in an almost out of control hysterical delirium as words jetted out in torrents, curt, fast, slashed, contorted into a moan. "It's war again, Carol!"

Taking a step back, Carol deadpanned despite the heaves zapping her quaking form, looking at him square in the eye. "I could do it." She felt sick with herself. There she was again; Carol, ex-submissive housewife, ex-victim of abuse, a formerly weak, meek widow and childless mother, now full on lethal instincts, conspiring another murder. With the same motive: protection of her beloved ones. Her mind was screaming that Martinez was erroneous, his unyielding faith in her was ridiculously misplaced when he believed she could come back from her crimes -she was too far gone.

"And that's the best option?" he groaned, bracing an arm to the wall in order to hold himself up. "Stomp out there half-cocked, firin' up in the middle of the camp?"

"Caesar," she whispered, reaching out for his shoulder until he swirled around again, an unfathomable look of confusion and inner turmoil plastered across his features as her digits curled around the hilt of the Bowie. "Nobody has to know."

"Who will take care of that girl of his then, huh?" Martinez frowned. "He has a child, godammit! If we kill him and something happens to that girl, it's on us, Carol!"

"I cannot _not_ do something," she seethed and banged her fist on the table, a punctuating pain clambering up her arm. "What do you want from me?"

"Hold off," he bit out dejectedly. "Just for now. Please."

Blue eyes, the hue of the Mediterranean sea, locked with the dark brown of blended mocha and java coffee bean, staring deep into each other, reintroducing, sizing up, scrutinizing the owners, prying the presence of an accessory or opponent. The brown eyes narrowed, deepening to the opaqueness of a muddy swamp, seeking the blue ones for ripples, wakes and eddies, for any sign of frailty or treachery. They detected none, the azure waters were frozen and regal and the stern look softened again, droplets of caramel allotting a warn mellowness in it.

"Are you really ready to commit another murder?" Martinez asked boldly, yet compassionately.

On impulse, her mouth cracked open to declare her hell-bent resolution only for a hacking noise to wing out. Floundering mutely, recruiting every grain of mettle and stamina slithering in her veins, Carol still couldn't muster the simplest of words to be uttered and just stood there, smothered to death by a howling conscience until her knees buckled.

Martinez grabbed her waist, his strong arms clamping and steadying her before she collapsed on the floor. "Just sit down. Let's talk this through," he droned quietly, swiftly gathering up the scattered pieces of his composure as he ushered her to the chair at the other side of the table.

Despite her stiffening, Carol complied, regarding him uncoordinated and heavy-lidded. "Send him away, Caesar, please," she begged despondently. "Tara, Lilly and Meghan, we can protect them."

When he stalked to the coffee machine to pour them both two mugs of tepid liquid and ambled back, handing her one without a response, she knew his answer.

"Sip it, junkie," he said softly. "You ain't functionin' without your shot."

"Thanks."

Inspecting her warily, Martinez's brows met at a deep-rooted wrinkle above his nose bridge. "What?"

"I was just thinking how I got banished for trying to protect my group and there lies the Governor, all fresh starts and clean slates and the full package deal," Carol huffed out at the irony of her situation. "You said he conned you. Yet you go and take him in."

"The Governor you know wasn't Philip and Brian maybe ain't the Governor no more," Martinez tried, unsure whether he was addressing his qualms or hers. "Not too long ago, Philip sheltered us, saved us, took in a bunch of starving invalids and gave us a reason to live, made us useful. Maybe Brian is more like him and less like the Governor."

Shaking her head, Carol gazed at him grimly. "You make personality transplants sound like changing shirts. He's a psychopath, Caesar."

"He's a different man," he insisted. "He almost died, ganked four walkers with his bare hands to save Meghan from the pit. I'm only telling you what I saw with my own eyes. That guy out there? I have no idea who he is, but he ain't the Governor."

"People don't change just like that," Carol argued, casting him a hard look he held with equal ferment.

"_You_ have," he retorted. "_I_ have."

Scoffing, Carol chuckled humorlessly, hoisting the mug to her mouth and dashing down half its content. "You know what Merle would say about this? 'Piss in my ear and tell me it's rainin', sunshine.' That's what he'd say."

Martinez's hand closed the space between them, enveloping the frosty temperature of her palm with his radiating warmth. "Carol, I need to know where your loyalties lie."

"It's hard to tell, isn't it?" she laughed bitterly, striving to lever the tears welling up in her eyes. "I mean, usually, you meet a person and you know that they'll be loyal to their family, protect them at every personal cost. You know _Brian_ will protect his family no matter what. But with stray dogs like me, it's next to impossible to tell. We're wild cards, committed to no one, too independent to be predictable."

"Don't mean that your word's worthless anyhow," he said generously with a supportive squeeze. "We need the muscle, ok? He's capable. Fuck, he's one hell of a soldier."

Carol gritted her teeth. "He's a lunatic murderer."

"Damn it, look at us!" he pleaded, his free arm wavering around. "Exposed out here, outgunned, outnumbered by any group with more man power and artillery than ours. I've stumbled upon so many groups all this time, watched them being wiped out, dropping like flies. The dead are almost an afterthought. It's humans we need to protect ourselves from."

"Humans like him!" Her hand jerked in exasperation and collided with the mug that toppled over on the table, splashing coffee on both their cargo pants.

Carol flinched but Martinez restored the firm clutch around her hand. "I'd do that for you. I'd kick him out, I _swear_ I would. But I don't want him in a war against us. He's worth a dozen men all on his own. I send him away now, who's to say he ain't comin' back to take us out later?"

Not knowing how to raise an objection to this, she pursued her lips and Martinez continued. "Do you even believe me when I say that I'd kick him out for you?"

Leveling her watery gaze, Carol came face to face with the raw, unadorned emotion of his rippling features and finally nodded faintly. "Yes. But there's more, isn't there?"

"I barely hold this group together," he muttered, sucking a shaky breath. "Mitch-"

At the sound of Mitch's name, Carol winced, her fingers instinctively shooting to her face to grope the slick tissue of the scar branded across her cheekbone, recalling her dire predicament before Martinez had stepped into them, reversing the tide in her favor. "He would have tortured and killed me in the woods if it wasn't for Pete. He would have done the same here if it wasn't for you."

"Mitch is ruthless, Carol," Martinez validated her claim. "He'd have made you grovel for a quick death. Tony and Mark follow him, they look up to him. The day they grabbed you they weren't even supposed to be there, you know that. I never ordered that bullshit, skulking in the shrubs for passerby, abducting women… They don't heed to commands. Sooner or later they'll be out of control, burn everything we have built here down to the ground. Pete is the only one with a sense of dignity, the only one who will root for me if things go south. If I get the Gov-Brian to side with me, I'll be stronger. And if I'm stronger…"

"… then you can keep us all safe," she finished off for him. "I know."

Shunting the flowery curtain away so as to permit the sunlight to flood in and lick the taut nerves of her face, Carol maundered her frustration. All she wished for at the moment was to open the window and let the crisp country breeze waft around, winnow the sweaty curlicues of her overgrown hair clinging to her nape and draw a lungful of air, reveling the sensation of the invigorating oxygen filling her lungs. She didn't. The sealed window glass was the only hindrance keeping the heated argument inside the trailer out of earshot.

The sight of the Governor, no, _Brian_, rigging up a tent outside the trailer doled out to the newcomer family of four with Meghan on his tail made her skin crawl. Lilly and Tara were nowhere to be seen, probably working themselves ragged inside to clean and spruce up the sloppy interior. But Meghan was all over him, giggling and nudging and gamboling around the man and he reciprocated her attention with tantamount zeal, keeping up a banter that Meghan obviously considered hilarious, occasionally dropping everything to pull her into a hug and tickle her belly. Little Red Riding Hood tricked by the Big Bad Wolf in her granny's disguise.

She wanted to rant that 'Brian' was the man who kept his daughter's reanimated corpse in a closet, searching for a cure and experimenting on head tanks, and no child should be allowed within a mile of him, but she couldn't bring herself to. Not to Martinez. Madness lined up with morality in the unattainability of a proper definition these days. Hershel had a barn full of walkers when the quarry group first crossed paths with him, the very same barn that was Sophia's last home on earth, feeding them live chickens. Michonne towed her chained 'pets', because once upon a time they were people who had probably hurt her and that was her payback. Lizzie humanized walkers, diligently approaching and befriending them, considering their equivocal status as some kind of phoenix resurrection through ashes, neither human nor dead, a different form of life. Abiding to the old, pre-apocalypse conceptual standards, all four of them, Brian, Hershel, Michonne and Lizzie, would be nuts. In the new status quo, not so much. And vice versa. Carol had refused to cast the walker wearing Sophia's meat suit a second look and attend her funeral, arguing that 'this thing' wasn't her daughter and Daryl had gone ballistic with her for refusing to see walker Sophia as a creature infiltrating at least some traits of who the child Sophia used to be. Lines were intersected, boundaries trespassed, black and white fused in an inherently grey spectrum. It was easy to invoke insanity to someone else's detriment. It was innately impossible to argue that any of the survivors roving on earth hadn't embraced a frazzled mindset at some point or another, herself included. Same with morality.

Reconsidering her previous suggestion to send _him_ away, Carol changed her mind. She didn't want him out there. He could raise an army and go back to the prison any time, kill Lizzie and Mika, kill Daryl, kill the others. Kill Rick. Despite everything, she never wished him dead. No, if the Governor, or Brian, or whoever that guys was, was to stay alive, she didn't want him leashed out there. She wanted him right there where he was, within arm's reach, where she could stalk and monitor his every initiative, movement and breath. If this ultimately claimed her life, then so be it –Carol couldn't care less.

Eyes glued on the two figures outside, she felt Martinez's stare boring holes in her face the entire time before eventually addressing him. "Why are you telling me all this?" she asked in defeat. "You don't need my permission, you lead this place alone. For all you care, I can suck it up and bow my head or pack my stuff and leave."

Leaning closer, Martinez glided his cup of coffee over the lacquered surface until it touched Carol's laced fingers. A gift. A peace treaty. "'Cause I need an ally, a second pair of eyes, someone I can trust without setting off any alarm bells," he confided soberly. "Other than me, you're the only one who knows who he is from before. But I need to know where your loyalties lie."

"What do Lilly and Tara know about him?"

"Jack shit."

"You've done right by me, Caesar," Carol sighed. "When I was brought in front of you, I thought I was a goner for sure, maybe worse. But you respected me, gave me a chance to prove myself. I'm on your side and I keep my word. Don't underestimate me, though. I'm with you, not with _him_. And I'm certainly not involved and _will_ use every means to battle anything that will put the people at the prison in danger."

"That's what I want," he agreed. "Look, I don't trust him either, ok? There's only a fair amount of crap I'm about to let fly. But we have the leverage here. He doesn't know who you are, you can keep a close eye on him without raising suspicions, vet him. Lilly is a nurse, she'll work with you. See what you can get out of her. He tries to welch on me or weasel outta our agreement, I'm putting him down. You see anything weird, you tell me, I'm putting him down. No questions asked."

"You want me to be your rat," Carol summed up the subtext of his speech.

"More like my confidante," Martinez rasped. "My _Olivia_."

Shooting him a quizzical look, Carol mulled over his riddle for a moment before nodding in agreement. "Ok, then, _Elliot_," she said with a meaningful quirk of her brow. "As far as he can tell, you are the only person who knows him from before. You know he isn't just Brian, the family guy. You _do_ realize what danger that alone puts you in, don't you?"

"Don't take a genius to figure," Martinez grunted, grinning that she figured his joke as he fished out the pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and lit one. Every sinew of his body was vibrating vehemently under his skin and it was plain as daylight that Carol was experiencing the same lather. "Wanna a drag?" he offered and she obliged, bursting into coughing throes as soon as the smoke tore through her lungs.

"First time?" Martinez smirked and she mimicked him when her suffocating fit subsided, offering a sincere, tight-lipped smile for the first time since the beginning of their vibrant exchange.

"You can tell?"

His fingers fluttered in a mute request to get his cigarette back, but Carol ignored him ostentatiously, finding the second drag of poison soaring in her innards oddly similar to a life buoy she could cling to amidst the tempest.

"Be my guest, then." Martinez lifted his shoulders nonchalantly, lighting up another one for himself. "Guess lung cancer is the least of our worries in this shit hole, right? End of the world and all…" he chuckled and added, "That other Dixon guy from your old group, Merle's brother. We butted heads that time Rick and the Governor met. One hell of a smoker!"

Striving to contain the shivering currents of emotion clawing up her spine, Carol willed a fake grin, allowing her eyes to drift outside again. She had heard that same line about lung cancer more times than she could count in the two year time span she had spent next to Daryl. Every time she'd mince his brain to wean from smoking like a chimney, he'd scoff and deliver these exact words like a memorized poem. "Bet that other Dixon guy, _Daryl_, would have liked you," she said huskily despite herself. Again. The feather touch of his name on her lips again and her heart grappled beneath the serrated maws of invisible pliers pulverizing her ribs and instantaneously detonating, pumping a scorching pain across her chest. "You two have a lot in common."

"You and your potty mouth," Martinez snickered. "I'm offended. The guy was a jackass."

"No," Carol replied dreamily, lost in thoughts light years far from the man across from her. "He has honor, like you do."

"He was your second in command, Daryl, wasn't he? He sided with Rick when he banished you?"

Her hammering heart was now drumming in her ears, a jarring emotion of crippling longing for him mercilessly rampaged her figure through and through. "He was on a run when it happened. But I guess he did later on. He sure as hell wouldn't have sided with my killing two sick people," she whispered and sealed her eyes for a moment, breathing raggedly, wrestling for a smidge of alleviation that mocked her, forever slinking out of her grip.

Having an ever-expanding and growing like a weed pile of unanswered questions for her and catching her extraordinarily receptive, Martinez pushed some more. "What you said earlier about families… Did you ever have one, _Olivia_?"

Four. The answer was four. One with Ed and Sophia, then Sophia and the group, then the group and Daryl and lastly the group, Daryl, Lizzie and Mika. Four families she either outlasted or survived without, like a diehard cockroach when the man she considered a brother ripped everyone away from her. "Doesn't matter," she murmured with a light sway of her head, countenance sullen and haunted, before glancing up to him. "But you did, didn't you?"

Martinez shot her a puzzled, albeit amused look. He liked her, she was sharp and insightful, a woman worthy of admiration. She was _important_.

"The way you spoke for the Gov- for Brian's little girl gave you away," Carol elaborated, her finger scribbling circular patterns close to him. "You gotta work on that poker face of yours, _Elliot_."

Chuckling in agreement, Martinez ducked his head. "Wife and two daughters," he said plainly after a while.

"Happily married?"

"Yeah, the American bullshit dream comin' true," he rattled on blankly and glassy-eyed, immersed in past reminiscence too distant to bleed anymore, but too painful to truly ever heal. An invisible scar engraved in his soul, out of sight for other people, a personal cross whacked on his back. "I lost them during the outbreak. I was at my best friend's place, planning our runaway from Athens. Left them back so that they were safe behind solid walls, you know? Next thing I know I come home around midnight and find my wife gnawing on our baby girl. Our older daughter was hiding under the table, already bit too. I put them all down, closed the door and headed off. Shit happens." Lifting his head again, he blushed in embarrassment finding Carol's empathetic gaze transfixed on him. "Wee bit of over-share?"

"No," she granted reassuringly, swallowing hard the lump blistering in her throat. Same old story, same old ordeal. Each with his own tragedy. Tempted to confide her pain and losses to him, Carol chinned up and clenched her jaw. She wasn't ready, she would never be ready to open that terrifying backdoor and let the memories of Sophia, Lizzie, Mika and Daryl gush in –that would be the last nail in her coffin. "I best get moving," she added hastily and moved to get up. "Chores won't get done on their own."

Martinez was instantly on his feet, nodding. "And I have to go gather a bouquet of walkers to throw back in the pit," he grumbled with an eye roll. His hand was already on the doorknob when Carol's voice cut through the silence again.

"_Elliot_?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't ever turn your back on him," she urged, face brooding and pensive. "You know better than that."

"Yes, ma'am," he smirked, bringing two fingers in his temple with considerable fanfare. And with that, he was gone.

xxxxx

The tangerine spark was soaring back and forth, flickering in the ebony, midnight stillness like a firebug buzzing with molten fury. _Brian_ and Lilly, sharing a smoke, a family and a life. Carol didn't like it, didn't _buy _it and certainly needed a fine excuse to dodge the barbeque tomorrow. She sighed, prowling on them behind the dark haven of her widow trailer, idly wondering whether Lilly, Tara and Meghan were nestled inside a protective embrace or snared in lethal peril beyond their knowledge –she'd vouch for the latter. She caught herself dumbfounded by how not terrified she was for her physical integrity despite the Governor's proximity. People with nothing to lose were dauntless and undeterred, but they were also dangerous –a lesson learned the hard way. He sure knew this much by now, too. And their roles were reversed this time, stakes too high for him, not for her.

Something wicked their way had come, but she was ready.

Her narrowed gaze zeroed in on the illusory reflection on the glass, barely identifying the mirrored feminine figure as her own. It was the image of a woman hardened by life and not gene, a woman resolved nonetheless. The most striking alteration was in her eyes, though. There was nothing inside them, the familiar twinkle of warmth snuffed out for good. There stood a woman strong, but cold, empty inside. She didn't like herself much these days. Those eyes that formed salty droplets, brimmed and drowned in tears so easily, that harbored the sting of bee bites almost permanently, remained arid for three months now. She had entirely overlooked the moment she stopped living and delved in sheer survival but it had happened and now she missed the old Carol, the sentimental and the crier, the same Carol she had wasted decades loathing instead of improving.

The Carol Daryl liked, once upon a time.

_Daryl_. There were no words descriptive and expressive enough for him, for what she felt for him, a pain running just too deep. Her only consolation was that she wasn't forced to confront him before hitting the road. Such a blow she would never overcome.

_Daryl_. The only musing optimism she had allowed herself all this time and only once in a while was a dreamy reverie of a brilliant sunny day when she'd get to have a glimpse of him from afar, never revealing herself. Far-fetched, but plausible. Now she was deprived of that fleeting hope as well. It was reality, just that. Now she was in the same group with the Governor, having undergone a full one hundred eighty in a blink. Now she could never see Daryl again, even from the distance. Too dangerous for him with the Governor around. It would probably cost his life and she'd walk out of the havoc unscathed and unimpaired, like the cockroach she was. Under no circumstances. Never. She knew now that that dream was all it ever would and could be –a dream.

Burying her face in her trembling hands, she let the tears flow and blind her sight for the first time since what seemed like an eternity, mourning a silent lament for her life without him.

* * *

**The Olivia/Elliot reference is from my all time favorite friendship between the Law & Order: SVU leading characters. **

**So… Martinez! For those of you who have read Expendable, Martinez's characterization is very close to that, although in this story I will have the chance to delve much deeper into a personality I've always found nothing short of intriguing and fascinating. I visualize him as a character pretty close and similar to Daryl's personality, one that simply found himself in the Governor's side when hell broke loose, just like Daryl found himself in the quarry –by chance. The grey area of his personality is a huge challenge to me and I find endless possibility in a character with questionable morality in the past, but under no circumstances unredeemable. Black and white characters are not my thing anyway, so don't expect any good guy – bad guy clean cut distinctions. One thing I can promise for sure is that I will try my best to do him justice and, whether he survives the storyline or not, I would never portray him stupid enough to trust Brian blindly and get clobbered by a golf club (yes, another tv show grudge…).**

**Did you like this chapter? What did you think of the Carol/Martinez characterization and the relationship between them? Are you starting to slowly figure out where this story is heading? Let me know! *bats eyelashes***


	4. Inside Traitors

**Merry Christmas to you all! Hope your holidays is awesome, your spirits always high and bright and your loved ones around you!**

**Thank you all for your kind words! I was away once again and my writing fell behind, but I think from now on I will manage to update twice a week.**

* * *

"_We were hooked when we woke.  
We had arms for each other.  
But I yearned to resume  
My dreams of another."  
― __Roman Payne_

Stifling a yawn, Glenn stretched groggily at the entrance of the common room and stalked over to his wife who was pouting at a granola bar looking at her from the table.

"Hate me again today?" he smirked, kissing the top of her head.

"Every damn minute of every damn day," Maggie groaned and glanced up at him, cracking an ear to ear grin to contradict her statement. "Nah, not really… But I'm getting huge and I'm only five months along. Soon I'll be waddling around this place like a duck. So much for your sexy wife…"

With all the appearances of genuine amusement, Glenn plopped down to the spot next to her, hands ghosting over her protruding pregnancy belly. "My wife is sexy even if she rolls instead of walking," he whispered smugly and Maggie cupped both sides of his face to place a kiss on his lips, gazing at him adoringly. Rapt contentment flashed through their eyes, a happiness that for once seemed un-concocted and it was proverbial to conclude from the spectacle of pure bliss that the moment would be short-lived.

Their tender exchange broke off when Beth, cradling Judith in her embrace, stormed inside with Hershel hobbling close behind her, a scornful worry engraved across both their features.

"Daddy, what's wrong?"

Hershel and Beth exchanged a troublesome look as they fanned around the massive board of the table. "Sasha found another rat," the girl announced. "Slashed open, just dumped at the fence line."

"Another one?" Glenn asked alarmed, pinching his bottom lip. "Jesus, how long has it been?"

"A bit more than three months," Hershel said quietly, regarding Maggie's belly with trepidation. Despite her youth, a pregnancy and a child delivery were always a pregnancy and a child delivery. Deprived of whatever the term contemporary pregnancy entailed as given services before the end of the world, nurses, obstetricians, maternity hospitals, drugs, surgeries, the level of risk had sky-rocketed. A psycho on the loose was pretty much the last thing needed.

Narrowing her eyes contemplatively, as if pondering on memories obfuscated by time and oblivion, Maggie strived to establish a rudimentary timeline. "Right," she muttered absently. "The one Tyreese found dissected in A block the day after Carol was banished. I guess I always assumed it was her."

"We certainly have a knack for pinning everything, from sour milk to the apocalypse, on Carol these days," Glenn grumbled and the couple exchanged a hard stare. Since the killer shocking revelation, the 'Carol issue' was a permanent source of strife between them. Maggie had backed Rick from the beginning, stomped her foot and remained adamant about it, while Glenn was always one of the first to trot to the gates and seek information, every time Daryl and Michonne came back empty-handed.

"Yeah, I can't imagine Carol stabbing rats in the catwalks," Beth argued, dandling the toddler in her lap and risking a sidelong glance to her sister.

"I couldn't imagine her stabbing people either," Maggie countered with a frown, eyeing each one of her interlocutors meaningfully. "Killing rats wouldn't exactly be flash news after that."

"Wouldn't it?" Hershel intervened, offering his older daughter a warm smile, the familiar twinkle of serenity and wisdom flickering in the ashen-tinged azure of his gaze. "What's happening here is that someone undermines the group's safety from inside. I believe Carol tried to do the exact opposite."

Shaking her head, Maggie bit her lip, squinting at Glenn. "I just don't understand this grudge against Rick," she argued. "He did the right thing. Who would feel safe around her ever again? Karen and David did nothing to deserve this treatment."

Hershel didn't budge, regarding Maggie with a countenance of stoic compassion. "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. What Carol did was wrong. That doesn't make what Rick did right."

Dipping her head, Maggie focused on steadying her breaths, hands rubbing soothing circles around her belly. It was more complicated than black and white. Much more complicated. Despite being well aware of that, she couldn't help but feel cheated, double-crossed, and any adverse rationalization seemed out of place. With Carol, it felt personal. Not just someone who had betrayed them, a random person; it was Carol. The Carol she trusted with her life, with _Glenn's_ life. It was because she loved her that her treachery was unforgivable, because she derived comfort and courage knowing Carol meandered around in isolation, keeping a close eye to Glenn, when in fact she pawed a knife and snuffed out the lives she was supposed to save.

And then it was another fear, a hindrance bouncing in her airway every time she thought of the baby. Her father and Bob were more than adequately skilled to pull off her pregnancy, Glenn adored her and Beth always had an encouraging word to offer. But what Maggie longed for was a combination of all that plus the conscious empathy of a woman cognizant of motherhood. Someone she could share her agonies with, someone to laugh with the freaking hormones swirling override, tainting her thoughts with chemical reactions, messing with her mind, her mood, her libido, someone to reassure her that any grains of charm and seductiveness she possessed weren't squelched under her expanding mass and unwieldy movements, someone who would tuck a tousled wisp of hair behind her ear and state matter-of-factly that she would make a great mother despite her insecurities for the opposite. Someone like Carol. As much as she fought to smother the resentment poisoning her tongue, Maggie couldn't view the situation under a different prism. For betrayal to happen, blind trust had to preexist and, according to her, Carol had not only earned a well-deserved exile, but had also threatened to leave her unborn child an orphan.

"What if it was you?"

Glenn shrugged and arched his brows. "Color me stupid, sweetheart, but for some reason my skin wouldn't crawl if Carol was around. I'd change any number of these people for one of ours. I think she did the same thing. And she was ours."

"This doesn't answer the question."

"But it does," he reasserted. "Carol wouldn't have killed _me._"

"Anyway," Beth chimed in before the argument got out of control and tempers flared. "She wasn't the rat feeder, we know it now."

"Could it be a child messing around? Experimenting with shit?" Glenn murmured, addressing himself as much as everyone else, vehemently scrubbing his eyelids with the heels of his hands. "I mean Lizzie thinks that walkers are people. She could be feeding them, thinking they're suffering and need food…"

xxxxx

They were Carol and Martinez for everyone else during daytime, under the relentless sun beams, when indiscreet stares lingered upon them and ubiquitous ears perked questioningly at any hushed interaction. They were _Olivia_ and _Elliot_ in the privacy of their trailers at the wee hours of the night, when breaths evened out, surrendered to Morpheus, and the inky sky was the sole witness to the top secret status of their conversations.

Two weeks since Brian & co had arrived, Carol really liked Lilly's company and enjoyed their close collaboration in the infirmary. They exchanged knowledge and never neglected to share a good laugh about the irony of a trained nurse like Lilly being equally the apprentice as much as she was the novice in these conditions of primal caretaking. But Carol couldn't stomach the woman's unswerving conviction that Brian was a living hero, flesh and bones. It drove her crazy that she couldn't raise her objections, reveal the Governor's true, beastly mug and pillory him publicly in a disgraceful defamation. Tara had also grown on her, a bit rough around the edges as she was yet amicable nevertheless. The openness about her homosexuality and her flourishing romance with Alisha, made Carol proud of Lilly's younger sister, filling her with hope and joy and willing her memory to dart back to Glenn and Maggie's first days at the farm.

The situation was much more complicated with Meghan. Carol caught herself avoiding the little girl like the pestilence. She was too beautiful, too cute, too sweet, too much like Lizzie, Mika and Sophia. Her presence was unsettling at best and the mere rumination of forming a close bond with another child and the attachment that bond would usher, repelled her. Despite doing her very best to conceal her unwarranted agitation and triumphantly succeeding as far as Lilly, Brian and the others were concerned, her suspicious behavior didn't evade Martinez's hawkish supervision. With each passing day, he stashed more and more questions and she grew more and more morally and socially indebted to him for keeping them to himself.

And then Brian, always Brian, the center of her attention and mind-boggling concerns. Carol was up in the arms that he wouldn't provide her and Caesar even with the slimmest of excuses for skepticism and mistrust. Brian was Caesar's most faithful ally between the group's soldiers, always supporting him, always one step behind. He was a gentle, eloquent man, a dauntless fighter, an ever contributing to the general well-being person and, as much as Carol and Caesar would like to refute and keep suspending trust to him, Brian had proven himself to be a valuable asset for their survival. Not that every little detail was in harmony, though. The more time flowed and the more Caesar got carried away by his obliging tenders, the more Carol felt his gaze loitering in extreme scrutiny on her every time he thought she wasn't looking. Something about her aura didn't sit well him with, sometimes it seemed like he was trying to dig up lost memories and sometimes that he simply considered her an opponent, someone he had to wrestle for Caesar's credence. Whatever it was, a deeply-rooted and unuttered antipathy, peppered with a pinch of enmity and rivalry had blossomed between them, blistering and gaining ground. But she couldn't muster Caesar to see the same thing she saw –he insisted that Brian's hostility was her own distrustful mind tricking her, besmearing her judgment, that she was dead on chasing the Governor and not giving Brian an honest chance.

The mood around the picnic table that afternoon was light as it usually was the case during a barbeque, the company cheerful and everyone's spirits high as Caesar rattled on past stories. Only two of the fellow tablemates, Carol and Brian, were a peg more vigilant and jumpy than the others, somewhat more pensive and significantly more introverted, surreptitious glances cast at each other occasionally intersecting momentarily before veering off the opposite direction.

Carol regarded Tara warily as the next wave of a hacking cough penetrated the woman's figure while Alisha tapped her back, looking quite cadaverous and anorexic herself. "That's a nasty cough you got there," Carol said guardedly, unable to tame the sickening hunch of a stealth plight roiling in her stomach.

"Yeah, I just need to get some rest," Tara smiled up reassuringly and rasped the frogs in her throat, nudging the blonde girl next to her with a playful sparkle in her dark eyes. "If Meghan doesn't hog the sheets for once."

Meghan looked hands down mortified at the dreadful indictment. "I never hog the sheets!"

"You kinda do, sweetheart," Lilly teased, grimacing mockingly.

"Brian?" the girl exclaimed so dramatically that everyone cracked up.

"I'm always on your team, kid," he chuckled and shrugged. "If you say never, it's never for me." His single source of vision skimmed to Carol who was silently prowling on his attitude and body language until Lilly's voice, elevating above the new cough fit from Tara and Alisha's bench, shattered their ocular joust.

"Wait, you said earlier that your father was a catholic priest?"

Martinez nodded, nibbling at the brim of his beer. "That's right."

"So the father became a daddy?"

"It caused some problems with the church a little bit," Martinez smirked, the slight inebriation gliding in his bloodstream prolonging the usual drawl of his accent. His eyes darted from Lilly to Brian's icy expression before squinting at Carol who was offering a tight-lipped smile from his left side. "This is all stuff Brian and Carol have heard before."

"You've done all right here," the woman stated, a speck of respect and admiration coloring her tone. "I mean this camp. It's the first time I felt safe since all this started."

It lasted a split second, but Carol didn't miss it. The gleam of ire sparking through his single eye at the sound of these words, the darkness replenishing his affectionate stare to Lilly, the dropping face as the corner of his lips surrendered to gravity and the aimless oscillation of the beer in the air before he stood up and trod a few strides away, ostensibly busy with something else.

"The place Brian and I lived before…" Martinez murmured. "It was a good thing while it lasted. Guess I wanted something like that again. The nice version of it."

"Sounds like your old camp was very sweet," Alisha offered with an exhausted sigh, checking her own temperature with a palm resting on her forehead.

"It was."

"This place is good, too, right?" Meghan asked expectantly, regarding him doe-eyed.

"You know it," he replied tenderly and winked at her as the girl snapped a toothy, thoroughly satisfied grin.

"I want to hear all about it someday," Lilly grouched, glancing back at her partner. "Brian won't say a word."

Slowly returning to her side, Brian held Lilly's gaze and advanced a half smirk, looking almost bashful much to Carol's surprise. She could see the appeal, the red herring resembling to the treasure chest, what it was that blinded smart women like Andrea and corroded their better judgment, degrading them to underdogs until it was too late. "I say leave the past in the past," he drawled.

"And you, Carol, have been with Caesar right after that place fell?" Tara inquired.

_No, I was in a prison with the rest of my group. By the way, Brian tried to assassinate us all twice, ask him. _Feeling his hand curving around her knee beneath the table, Carol simply shook her head and swallowed hard, allowing Martinez to speak up on her behalf. "Carol's been aboard for the last three months," he said casually with a praising smile. "Things around here got really better since she joined us"

Poking his ribs with the back of her hand, Carol blushed and chortled modestly. "No, no, no, no… It's more like the other way around. I would have been long gone if Caesar hadn't taken me in."

"What happened to the group you were before?" Normally, it would have been an ordinary inquiry, an innocent question it only felt natural to be poised to each one of them. Normally, it would ignite no flame and would be dismissed on an accelerated basis with an impromptu lie. Normally, if it had sprung from anyone else other than the Governor.

"Same thing that happens to most groups these days," she deadpanned, the idle smile swiftly ebbing away as her stern look hardened, regarding him provocatively. Never had she been much of a fibber. The last time she had to lie to cover herself and secure her indisputable place in the prison group, it resulted in the blatant confession of a double murder. "You know, you're right, _Brian_. Past's better left in the past."

"It's just that sometimes I'm under the impression that we've met before," Brian pushed more, inspecting her unfazed.

The grip around her knee tightened forcefully as Carol's fork teetered over her plate and she hardly snatched it before plummeting to the gravel. It'd be so easy, really, whipping her gun out of its holster and put a bullet between his eyes, embracing the murderer inside her once and for all, betraying Caesar and bereaving Lilly, Tara and Meghan from their protector. The real challenge was to keep her instinct at bay. "Not that I'm aware of," she answered soberly despite her agitation.

"That's such a cheesy line to hit on a woman, Brian," Tara giggled. "Even a lesbian can tell."

"And I'm standing right here," Lilly fed the banter. "Go figure!"

The steep-sided precipice that surged and gapped between the two crossing parties was inconspicuous to Meghan, Lilly, Tara and Alisha who chortled merrily at each other whereas Martinez and Carol stiffened defensively, glowering down on Brian who was perusing and sizing them both up investigatory, as if a vast chasm occurred out of nowhere between the innocent and guilty ones amongst them and they were no longer partakers of the same cookout.

Carol's nostrils flared the exact same moment a sly leer started to thrive on Brian's lips and Martinez's steel clinch clamped, a staggering vise impossible to surmount. "That's very unlikely," he said definitively, staring at the man he recognized as the Governor for the first time in two weeks undeterred. "Carol ain't from Georgia."

Brian's eye instantly flicked back to Carol who squared he shoulders defiantly, but before any of them had the chance to voice another word, Alisha swirled around on her seat and bend over the soil, retching repeatedly the contents of her stomach.

"Maybe it's not just fatigue," she heaved between visceral throes as Tara cupped her forehead. "I think I'm coming down with the stomach flu or something as well."

"Best get you both to the infirmary," Carol urged, standing up without further delay, the imminent threat summarily prodding her back to action. "It's probably nothing, but I've seen this kind of symptoms turn really bad before."

xxxxx

He didn't mean to overhear them. He didn't mean to sneak up on them like that. All Daryl wanted was to head to the woods without much fuss and not a word with anyone, especially Rick, hunt down some game, toil himself ragged at the fences till bed time, get up at dawn, repeat the same schedule and countdown the dawdling time until he and Michonne would hit the road again.

Crashing in the prison was no walk in the park. Lack of the dangers lurking in the wilderness, strong walls, soft mattress, homemade food did nothing to soothe Carol's absence. On the contrary, every tiny detail, from the evacuated cell no one dared to claim, the wishy-washy soups and tasteless meals, to the spears of biting coldness chomping him head to bottom, like ravenous piranhas stapled on his body –everything ached, a flashing billboard reminding that all this, the prison, the food, the temperature were different, were friendly, were nice while Carol was there. Even the safety of the building ignited a throbbing queasiness deep in his stomach –it only reminded him that _she_ wasn't safe.

It was his failure to find her, his skills betraying him, his nefarious mastered craft proved phony and inadequate. It was her perpetual absence, the sense that earth crackled opened and devoured her without a trace. All these combined, it was death. A death implied, deduced by deficiency of any proof for the opposite, but it was a death he'd never take for granted until proven otherwise.

Daryl thought he knew death. Death was a deafening cosmic blast summoning mystical, almighty powers, pulverizing everything in its wake. Thunder and lightning and booming explosions. Clamors and havoc. Tumultuous chaos as the froth of the tsunami laps on arid earth. He thought death was meteor showers and earthquakes. Gory claws and slimy, gluttonous jaws. Only it was not. Death was deceit; icy pangs cloaked in sunny beams among the oxygen particles, sieving his body like invisible spikes. Death was coldness, like morning mist and dew, like snowflakes floating and swirling amidst a summer morning. Death was silence and utter stillness, more desolate than the hush of early dawn. Death was absence, was her silk scarf he had snagged before her belongings were packed and stored away, hanging laxly from a hook in his cell, waiting for her to drape it casually around her neck. Death was the raking fear that the next sunrise would find him alive, sitting in his bunk, in the middle of an empty, frigid cell with the soft garment brushing his fingertips like a windblown curtain and for a fleeting moment he would snap his head peering at the doorway, hallucinating her emerging there and the last time he ever laid eyes on her wouldn't bear the irrevocable finality that wrecked him.

Two days, that was all. It was Michonne's nonnegotiable demand: for every week in the woods, a couple of days spent back in the prison to recharge their batteries. He knew the drill to make it out of the prison. Autopilot mode. Short, curt, monotonous commands. Military style. Stereotypical instead of out of the box thinking, the exact opposite from the resourcefulness he struggled to squeeze out while out there, looking for her.

_Don't think._

_Walk._

_Walk._

_Don't think._

_Walk._

_Hunt. _

_Hunt._

_Don't think._

_Keep busy._

_Walk._

_Keep busy._

_Don't think._

_Sit._

_Eat._

_Don't think._

_Don't think._

_Walk._

_Walk._

_Keep busy._

_Close your eyes._

_Don't think._

_Sleep._

_Don't think._

At first, he tried counting the days. One, two and out of here. It had seemed easy but wound up quite a masterstroke, for each day felt like a lifetime. Then he tried the hours but gave up on that as well when he had to unhook the clock from the canteen to check the batteries, convinced beyond doubt that the batteries had gone flat and it was stuck at 3 p.m. Finally, he turned to seconds, a permanent coo-coo clock attached on his brain whose hands ticked indolently, counting the frivolous raps the same way he was counting his convulsed breaths. One by one.

And this time, he was already halfway there. Half mission accomplished. The first night was past him and he had one more hunt, one more lunch, one more manual labor at the fences, one more dinner, one more watch duty, one more sleep and then, same time next day, he'd be out there again. Eighty-six thousands and four hundred seconds. Less, actually; minus ten thousands eight hundred –it was three hours after sunrise already.

Therefore, when he walked in on Rick, Michonne and Tyreese discussing in the back perch, his reflexive impulse was immediate retreat, but then he remembered that the getaway corridor would barf him up straight into the common area where the Greens and Rhees were gathered, analyzing Carol and the rat feeder.

Outwardly, Daryl scowled. The rat feeder. Like he cared. Like it was his business. Like he didn't have more serious problems, more personal hurdles. Like he owed Rick his assistance. Like he had the obligation to protect pregnant Maggie, because she was ripe to become a mother the same time she was totally fine with another woman having her children ripped away from her. Inwardly, he had nothing short of a shit-storm of wrath and hatred for himself. He hated that inside traitor; not the rat feeder, the other one, the one squirming in his gut, chanting that he _did_ care for these people, that he _would_ defend them, that if everything went south, he'd still be there to pull them out of the gutter. After his search.

"This ain't feeding. It's luring," Rick drawled grimly, stooping over the railing, teeth plowing into his lower lip contemplatively. "Someone's drawing them to the fences."

"Told you time and time again," Tyreese argued vehemently, waving his arms. "We got a psychopath living with us. He was hibernating for a while and now he's back."

"Yeah…"

_This is premeditated, you idiots, _Daryl raved internally, but didn't divulge his hideout_. That asshole wasn't hibernatin', he was blurrin' the waters and while you all were stupid enough to pin this on Carol, he had all the time of the world to dig our hole._

"Or a traitor." The rational thought process voicing his own concerns stemmed from Michonne. "Someone who wants the prison to fall."

Rick's trouble-smitten gaze shot up to her. "Who would want the prison to fall? And why?"

"That remains to be figured. We find the motive, we know who's behind it," she replied solemnly, eyes lingering on Tyreese. "But Carol is out of the picture now. Unless she can wriggle her way through the pipes, this ship was scuffled today."

The black man opened his mouth to counter something, but was interrupted by Rick's placating gesture. "Carol ain't the issue here, Ty," he rasped, stepping between them. "I need to talk with Sasha. You know where she is?"

"Last time I saw her she was with Bob."

"Can you go find her for me? Tell her to meet me in my cell in half an hour? You're welcome to join."

Sharing a hard look with Michonne for one long moment, Tyreese inhaled sharply and backed off, walking away with a curt nod to Rick.

When the ex-sheriff was certain there was just the two of them within earshot, he resumed his previous position, fingers threading through strands of overgrown, greasy hair. "Any good news from you for a change?"

Shaking her head, Michonne ambled closer, mimicking his posture as she leaned over the railing. "Talked to him again last night. He won't quit."

"Shit," Rick cussed under his breath and once again braced himself up the metallic banister as if clutching on to it was the sole preoccupation stanching a free fall on the pitted concrete, gaze hollow and stormy darting out of the knitted wire protecting the yard from the lethal brunt of moving yet lacking any sort of self-awareness bodies, bulging blindly against it. "Walkers are herding up, dozens of them pushing against the fences again. And the fences… Every part's fizzling out every damn day. The more we take out the more they keep gathering. The spot behind Tower 4 won't last for long, " he groaned his frustration. "And now the rats again? I need you both here."

"I can stay back this time, give you a hand," she offered, slanting her eyes at him in a studious assessment of the mental state of the man next to her.

"No," Rick rasped quickly enough, voice catching just a split second, betraying his uncertainty, the inner struggle whether to put himself and the group first and take full advantage of one of his most proficient fighters or think of Daryl, his friend, his needs, the jeopardy he daily thrust himself into because something inside him dictated that he had no other option –every conflicted feeling rutted across his brow. "No," he reiterated more confidently this time. "We'll manage this place, hack something. He can't be alone out there. Even for Daryl, it's… It's too dangerous."

Silence wafted from the space between them and rolled around, settling across the confined walls like a foreboding tuft of shadow. For a second, even Daryl doubted that the two interlocutors were still in place.

"You know, I wouldn't bring this up on my own, but since you mentioned it-" Michonne muttered. Her voice came a bit distant in the beginning, as if she had started taking off and changed her mind midway, returning back. "How could you, Rick? Send her out there like that alone? It'd be easier for him to forgive you if you had just shot her like a dog."

"She left me no choice!" Rick howled and banged his fist on the metallic surface, wincing in pain. "I did what I had to do. You think that's what I wished for her? To be abducted by God knows who?"

"What did you think happens to women out there?" Michonne questioned softly, recognizing the guilt that couldn't be channeled out, the doubt that couldn't be afforded, the denial that was the last solace in a fraying composure. "Not all of us are samurais."

Rick started muffling a protest only to be interrupted by her raised hand. "Yeah, I know what people call me behind my back and I don't give a shit about it," she smirked for a moment before picking up from where she was left. "It's a war, Rick. I have no idea when point zero was, when it all started, but it's been a war ever since. Between the living, not just the dead. You were a law enforcement officer, you know what happens in war. Men die, but women suffer. You can't stick your head in the sand and pretend you don't know."

"You think she's dead?" Rick soughed almost inaudibly, something unidentifiable pulsating heatedly in his hushed tone.

"I think we'll never find out," she replied honestly, vocalizing their collective concerns and Daryl sealed his eyes to eschew the sting gnashing there at the sound of his worst nightmares reverberating deafeningly inside his skull. He knew his chances, he knew he couldn't possibly win this. And it didn't matter. For as long as he didn't have a body, he couldn't stop, he wouldn't stop, plunged nose deep in creeping contingencies, in a dire default of 'what ifs' and hazardous probabilities. Because for as long as he didn't have tangible proof of her death -and 'tangible' to Daryl meant nothing short of a corpse, deceased or reanimated- the flickering hope that he would eventually somehow track her still kindled audaciously. Never found dead translated directly into forever considered alive, full stop. The jasper stone next to the feminine watch would continue scalding holes in his pocket and Sophia's hairband excoriating his wrist like a thorny crown.

"But as long as Daryl's out there looking, so will I," Michonne added.

Angling the powder blue hue of his gaze, that pale shade consonant with elder people and not a male in his heyday, Rick inspected her quizzically. "I didn't know you and Carol were so close."

"We weren't," she admitted. "But she and Hershel sided for me to stay when nobody wanted me here and I never got to exchange more than a couple of banalities with her." There was another pause, as if her taciturn character cast its defensive shield, gagging her instantaneously, and then words spurted out in gales. "You know what I saw back then? I saw the matriarch of this group, the caretaker, the woman that embraced people from Woodbury. An alpha _female_ for a change that needed no guns and badass antics to prove her value," Michonne heaved and fidgeted nervously, huffing out a humorless laughter. "She scared the shit out of me, Rick, the way she threw herself at loving people without considering the risks, what losing them could do to her. That's why I always kept my distance. Now you see a murderer, someone cold, someone not sorry. I see a woman who has lost herself, because she cared too damn much. _She got caught in her own trap._"

Forcing a ragged inhalation, Rick turned to face her. "Before you met us, I had a best friend," he confided, voice distant and blank, pondering on days gone by. "Together since we were kids, together in the force, partners later, best man in my wedding. Shane was family, he was my brother… Kept Lori and Carl alive before I found them. Then he fell in love with my wife, considered Carl his own. Wanna know something no one talks about around here? Judith ain't mine, she's Shane's daughter, but they pretend they don't notice. He shot a man in cold blood and left him behind just to escape with the medicines Hershel needed to save my boy when he got shot. He started losing it then, tried to leave the group, save himself, but I wouldn't let him. I wanted him there, I wanted him to be the man I once knew, the brother I trusted more than I trusted myself. I gave him a gun and told him 'Time to come back, brother'. I gave him the same gun he tried to kill me with," he spat out indignantly, gawking at his spread hands as if they belonged to someone else. "Wanna know something else _no one_ knows?" Suddenly gasping for air, realizing what he was ready to confess, Rick shook his head wildly. "Never mind."

Listening everything attentively, Michonne read between the lines, perceiving the deadlock while permitting the unspoken secret he wished to keep for himself. "That's projection," she whispered compassionately. "You were wrong with this Shane guy and afraid to do the same with Carol. But you also leave people out there all the time because you don't like their answers to your questions. You'd cringe if you knew about the stuff I've done to survive out there alone. The only real difference is that I never told you. The way Daryl sees it, it was Carol this time and that's enough for him. If she can't come back from what she did, then who can? I don't see much hope for any of us either." Her voice dropped a full octave, stressing her next words with accentuating emphasis as if illustrating the self-evident to an ignorant child. "That's why he can't forgive you. You robbed her from that chance. And you robbed him from at least trying to bring her back from whatever dark place she was."

"She didn't even defend herself, Michonne," Rick grunted, painfully clenching his jaw. "She just took it. She knew what murder meant and she knew she had one hell of a bill coming due."

"And Daryl thinks that if she had managed to contain the spread, you'd be fine with the murders. Is he right?"

"I don't know."

"I'll take that as a yes."

"Take it any way you want," he bit out.

"I'm not judging you, Rick. I understand what a fucked up situation that was. But you made a mistake. It happens, but it was a mistake," she droned. "You have high morals, you do. You have high morals and no malice in your heart. But can you always live up to them? Because I can think of plenty occasions that you haven't. And you can't have greater expectations from the others."

"There's nothing I can do to change things now. All I can do is bolster the fences, keep the walkers out, find the rat feeder and grow peas," Rick wheezed, every nerve vibrating heatedly as he ran two calloused palms across his face. "God…"

He trudged away heavy-footed and guilt-blighted without another word and Michonne watched the hunched shoulders slouching more step by step until he was out of sight. It was only after that she spun around and entered the dimly-lit building, stomping into an emotion-ruffled Daryl shored up against the wall and a puffy, red-rimmed gaze staring square at her with a molten fiery that could scorch her dark eyes into embers. "What, you're eavesdropping now?" she sneered to mask the onslaught of consternation weltering through her. "What's next? Peeping at the showers?"

The tidal force of a sentiment long drowned into oblivion swelled and wallowed in his chest, a sentiment overwhelming, bordering on infeasible to be vocalized, gratitude. Closing the space between them, Daryl clumsily clasped her shoulder, blinking the brimming tears away. "Thanks, samurai" he breathed barely perceptibly, blowing out a lungful of air he had been withholding for God knew how long, this simple word withering out strained in the process.

"Sure," Michonne muttered and ducked her head, frowning at her boots. "See you tomorrow dawn at the gate?"

xxxxx

"This ain't happening," Martinez hissed through gritted teeth, wincing in pain as his white knuckles collided with the table. "I ain't losing people from this shit!"

Forcing her steadfast equanimity back in place, Carol didn't flinch at the rage eruption unraveling before her. "You _will_ lose people, Caesar," she stated solemnly, eyes skimming between her laced fingers and the wild gaze transfixed on her. "You will and there's nothing you can do about it. We can only try to save as many of them as possible. The faster we move, the better chances we have."

"Maybe it ain't even the same," he countered obstinately with dogged persistence not giving leeway for persuasion, hands fisted, the intractable composure and resolution so akin to his leadership rifted like a fragile crystal.

"It starts with cough, weakness and nausea and before you know it people are suffocating, choking in their own blood," Carol went on calmly yet firmly, staring right back at him with an unyielding determination matching his like two pieces of the same jigsaw. "It's terrifying how they will start bleeding from every orifice and it's already spreading. Our chances depend on how fast you're willing to take action."

Eight hours after the casual gathering around the picnic table, both Tara and Alisha were laid up for good, shuddering from consecutive hacking attacks, the barely digested lunch forged outside by guttural spasms, leaving regurgitative aftershocks in their wake. That put aside, what Martinez couldn't refute was that one by one many group members started succumbing to the exact same symptomatology, children and adults, women and men, all equally vulnerable. One of the most precious fighters, vital for their collective defense capacity despite his shady morality, Mitch, was reported stumbling and throwing up, supported by Pete minutes ago. While Lilly was busy tending to her sister and her sister's girlfriend in the infirmary, candidate patients fell in line outside, examined by Carol until Martinez called her in his trailer.

"Could we quarantine the sick?" he groaned, masking the haunted expression etched across his features behind a pair of veiny, tensed hands. "Contain it somehow?"

Carol lifted her shoulders, knowing in advance that she had no crooning answers to please and mollify him, most possibly no answers at all. "Keep those not exposed away from the rest."

"Who ain't exposed?"

"In these living conditions?" she exclaimed, tossing her arms in the air. "I have no idea."

"Fuck, Carol!" Martinez barked, kicking the cabinet across from him with everything he had. "Fuck! How am I supposed to fight this? Biters, men, traitors? Sure, bring them on! But _this_? This is a ghost! I have no weapons against invisible threats!"

Leaning closer, Carol pursed her lips, forehead wrinkled in grave distress. "You're not alone, Caesar," she offered. "And this isn't on you."

"These people are _my_ responsibility," he panted, pointing at the vague exterior of their confided, box-like sanctuary with a trembling forefinger, his free hand abrasively chaffing his clapped out eyes. Soft fingers curled around his arm, coaxing it back on the table in nothing more than a feather touch and he heaved a few stabilizing breaths, this simple supportive gesture swiftly refreshing his trampled mettle despite the avalanche of emotion wagging his sternum. Eventually, Martinez lifted his head and nodded the silent understanding conveyed between them, gazing at Carol. "Just tell me what needs to be done."

Even too conscious of their dire predicament to stave off the foreboding atmosphere as the night seemed mysteriously eerie and the frigid gush of death wings flapped above their camp, Carol couldn't curb the sad half-simper glittering in the corner of her mouth. Martinez would never be just their leader, just Caesar, a friend, or _Elliot_ for her. He was for a long while and would remain indefinitely the closest copycat she had of _him_, a nearly carbon reflection reminding her twenty-four seven of the man, the hunter that was always, _always_ saturating her every thought. The abundance of shared traits between Martinez and _him_ was bordering on opprobrious and twitting. Same ill-tempered demeanor, same spontaneity to throw a hell of a temper in one moment and regard her sheepishly the next, same disinterestedness, unselfishness and self-sacrifice, same eagerness to put their neck out there and meet their demise protecting their own.

And as if all these weren't more than enough riveting already, they didn't even begin to grope their most striking similarity –the subtle way they both needed her pampering and comfort and the endless care and special attention they showered her with in exchange. What she found utterly astonishing was the way Martinez's intense gaze never lingered on the long laceration blemishing her left cheek barely two inches below her eye, courtesy of Mitch whose life was now hanging from a thread, as if he was oblivious of it, precisely like _he_ always seemed impervious –although she knew it was simply a well-performed act- to the scars and the profound abuse she had suffered, treating her like a whole person.

But Martinez failed to make her heart jolt and skip beats, failed to clamor her mind, failed to rampage her dreams, failed to mold butterflies in her stomach, failed to make her shrivel with desire, because at the end of the day, the throne of her beloved one wasn't in auction, seeking for an heir, it was already dwelled; and that was all Martinez was meant to always be, a surrogate. He would never be _Daryl_. She had already found her unique spot in the infinite universe against all odds and physical laws and it was her fault that she had lost it, even if the feeling was never reciprocated. There couldn't be such a blast of serendipity again, for Daryl was destiny and not mathematics and therefore, starting over with another man was off limits, because once a person acquainted with such bottomless depth of love like she had, settling for less sounded nothing more than an entertaining quip.

Shimming a hand in her pocket, Carol sniffled and blinked away the mist veiling her vision, fishing out a bottle of vitamins and spilling two in Martinez's palm who dashed them down without further debate. "Better safe than sorry?" he sneered bitterly.

"Safe is quite an overstatement here," she snorted, regarding him warily. "Just trying to buck up your immune system the best we can. This group can't afford losing you."

"I'm healthy as a horse. Ain't never been sick in my whole life," he announced confidently, watching her tucking the bottle back in her pants. "What about you?"

"I'm safe," Carol replied dejectedly and quirked her right brow, tone warped with an acerbic coldness that was absent the second before, as if she was talking about an immortal cockroach, escaping death despite being bathed into a ton of pesticide. "Already exposed to the virus once and never got sick."

Narrowing his eyes, Martinez took in the light twitch of her mouth. "Back to the prison, did you lose anyone you loved from the disease?" he inquired.

"You know what I did trying to contain it," Carol sputtered with no trace of self-mercy or absolution for her doings. "The way I see it, I lost _everyone_ I loved from the disease." Once again, she was the first to stand up, abruptly ending a conversation galling her and Martinez followed her lead, towering in front of her. "Look, I understand if you don't trust me to be around the sick," she sighed, absently scratching the scar marring her cheekbone. "But I can tell you what the medics back in the prison did. I don't know if it worked, but it's all we got right now."

"I'll take my chances with you, _Olivia._"

"Maybe you shouldn't."

Shunting away the nails now grazing contemptibly the filmy tissue of her scar, Martinez caressed the full length of it, his coarse thumb dabbing the branded flesh in a gesture teeming with such an exuberant effluence of delicacy he didn't consider himself capable of anymore. Bewildered by his own tenderness, he still didn't budge at the attack of pure shock spreading across Carol's face. "If I were to fall sick, there ain't no one I'd rather have around," he croaked, huskier than he intended to.

"Don't," she gasped and cocked her head away from the unforeseen, affectionate touch, voice contorted into a muffled whimper before hardening to talk business again. "We need to gather all the medicine we got here as well as in the woods cabin. The huckleberry jar Lilly's boiling now will be used up quickly, too. And don't consider yourself out of the woods, either. You just think 'flu' but it can bring down a guy twice your size like it's nothing. You will call a meeting with the first light to organize at least two run parties and I'll be in one of them. Before you tee off raising objections to everything I say, yes, I have to go because no one else knows what huckleberry looks like and where to look for it; no, you're not coming with me and yes, I'll be just fine with whoever I'm paired up with. You _have_ to stay back to overview the situation here and keep an eye on Brian. I know you saw the same thing I did today at the barbeque and you can't let him-"

Caught mid-sentence between cascading words by the door rebounding frantically, almost ripped off its hinges under the brunt of violent blows, Carol felt her knees turn into jelly and her gorge rise at the blood-curling sight when Martinez swung the door open. The ruthless predator, the one always skulking in the shrubs anticipating for his prey, insatiable for gore and atrocities, morphed into a terrified doe, quivering from dread and horror like a house of cards.

"Help me!" Brian implored desperately, coddling the squirming girl in his broad embrace. "Meghan is sick."

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**So… it appears that Carol and Daryl will be in the woods at the same time… Hmm…**

**I know you want them to meet and I promise that they will, sooner than you think *wink wink* I'm not being sadistic here, everything that is happening serve the buildup of the story. The rat feeder, Brian, Maggie's pregnancy, the secret Rick didn't tell Michonne and everything else will come into play and have a major role for the Caryl in this fic. My insistence on Carol's watch, Sophia's hairband and all the emotional turmoil Daryl is experiencing isn't random either. Everything he goes through is because he has to be broken to the core to reassess his past actions and choices (and yes, I believe he's broken and remorseful just fine by now… :)) so as to be ready to overcome himself and do something inconceivable for Carol's sake.**

**In case you have any ideas about the rat feeder, the reasons Brian is suspicious of Carol or what Rick didn't tell Michonne, bring them on! I'd love to know you thoughts! And if you liked what you read, please drop me a review :) Writers thrive on positive and constructive feedback!**


	5. Crossroads

**Hey everyone,**

**I hope you enjoy this chapter! It's a moment I was looking forward to :)**

**If you like what you read, please spare a second to drop me a word. Lack of feedback for the last chapter was disheartening and I can only assume that the majority of you absolutely hated what you read. As I said before, though, this story is already planned out, so I will keep updating it for as long as I can without feeling a little stupid for putting so much effort in this.**

* * *

"_There must be a few times in life when you stand at a precipice of a decision. When you know there will forever be a Before and an After...I knew there would be no turning back if I designated this moment as my own Prime Meridian from which everything else would be measured."  
― __Justina Chen__, __North of Beautiful_

"Tony and Mark will head to the veterinary college," Martinez announced, squinting at the first sun rays that tipped over the ridges running up the spine of the countryside. Surrounded by seven of his men, those so far asymptomatic, and Carol fidgeting impatiently next to him, he took in the somnolence rutted across sullen faces as they paddled through the ghastly night and the fear radiating from every pore of their bodies. Each one of them had a family member laid up from the mysterious disease. It was impossible for the threat to become more personal.

Alex and Steve, their children, youngest daughter and son correspondingly.

Pete, his brother, Mitch, and Scott his older sister, Emma.

Tony, his wife, Erin, even though Martinez suspected that Erin would pray to God for death if it only meant to escape her husband's shadow. As much as he had tried to stop him from beating her down on a regular basis, it had only resulted in Tony becoming one of his most sworn adversaries, blindly objecting to everything he did. Martinez did threaten to kick him out once if he didn't change tactics with his wife, but then Erin dropped on her knees, begging him to spare her husband and making Caesar feel like a complete idiot. Carol hadn't accomplished much, either, despite her efforts to coax Erin out of her shell and lure her into the infirmary to train her, make her useful and confident, and gradually, more independent. Erin had persistently turned her down.

Mark, the youngest between them, who turned twenty-three the week after Carol had joined them, his father.

And Brian. Brian, whose loyalties had yet to tip to a side and be made clear. Brian, who always backed him up in every argument, but had almost called Carol out during the barbeque. Brian, who was at the forefront of losing his entire family right now. Martinez didn't know what to expect out of him, in case Lilly fell sick as well or Meghan died. If Brian underwent such a tremendous transition once again, from family guy to a loner, he'd turn into a wild card again.

People he knew, people he had fought side to side with, people he had vowed to protect against living and dead. And now he had to summarily come to terms with losing God knew how many of them, dig up new graves and proceed with mass burials of friends, children and comrades like it was nothing. Not everything could be dismissed with a deep sigh, a tear swiftly swept away and a grim 'Shit happens' before gazing up at the future. Not this.

His blood converted into ice when Carol, waddling towards the meeting point with a crate full of supplies propped up on her thigh and him on her tail, declared flat out that they were extremely lucky they hadn't suffered any losses during the night. The redundancy of this, that people were expected to die, drop like flies the entire freaking time, and the simple fact of how adjusted they had grown to it sent shivers down Caesar's spine. Death was like food –even though it became no more palatable as time flowed, they soon became sufficiently inured to crave and savor every tasteless bite. Food was unsavory and death routine –and survivors were appropriated to both. The conundrum, thus far unanswered, of achieving survival without righteous aberration. Codes were crumbling, humanity was teetering from extinction to the immediate threat of complete annihilation and survival of the fittest hurled to the top of their concerns.

"Carol's rigged up a list with the medication and supplies you're looking for," he went on, inhaling sharply, and handed Mark a piece of paper. "She will head to the woods with one of you to find a weed that can help and then to the cabin to fetch the antibiotics stocked there, just in case. The rest of us stay behind. Those who know first aid basics will help with the patients, the others will watch the perimeter, make sure nothing gets inside the camp." His voice was calm yet stern, eyes drifting around, sojourning for a quick, albeit thorough once over on each one of his men before he turned to the woman standing next to him, giving her the floor. "Carol."

Taking a front step, Carol squared her shoulders, regarding the male looks plowing through her evenly. "I gathered everything we have that might be useful here. I also fixed up some more IVs overnight. Dehydration can lead to a very bad turn," she said, gesturing to the picnic table behind them. Lately, as her voice came out steady and unwavering, no matter who might glower down on her, she sometimes wished that Ed was miraculously resurrected somehow only for him to witness this and for her to taste the sweet revenge of his goggled eyes. But most of the time, she just longed for Daryl to be around and watch her not blinking, not shrinking, not flinching when men twice her size barked directly at her or mutely threatened her with an aggressive posture. How proud he'd be if he could put her killer status behind them for a moment. Sure he had seen her evolving into an independent woman, brave enough to speak up for herself without chaperones or advocates, but the level of emancipation she had achieved next to Martinez was of unprecedented magnitude compared to the prison.

Both Martinez and Daryl had treated her like an equal, amping up her self-esteem and confidence, but Martinez bestowed her with something entirely new, something that was vital for her healing _after_ the double-crime she committed and the exile she received: warranted action. Thanks to his unconditional acceptance, Carol was lugged up the hierarchy, dubbed and recognized silently as the indisputable queen bee of the group. She knew now that, had Martinez been part of the prison group when the flu spread, she would have never been compelled to take that self-destructive, pointless initiative and act behind everyone's back, because Martinez would have registered the signs and would have listened to her.

If Daryl would have treated her the same way after what she did, couldn't be definitively determined now that history had jumped ahead of them. But Daryl had always been on Rick's side, no exception there, and for some reasons bound to remain unanswered, it was always easier for him to hightail it whenever she needed more than an approving nod. _'You all right?' 'I'm worried about Lizzie and Mika. They were around Patrick.' 'We all were. Karen and David are gonna be separated till they feel better.' 'You're right. Are you ok?' 'Mn-hmm. Gotta be.' _He should have seen it back then, he sure had, right at that corridor, her sanity smashed into dust, her blind panic, but he chose to look the other way, consciously ignoring her cry for help, fearful of any intimacy trespassing his personal boundaries. She had given him all the signs; he had ignored them. It was the ultimate reason she had bent to Rick's decision and fled after all –because she never believed, not for one second that Daryl would listen, really listen to her that time. On the contrary, granted the evidence, he wouldn't hesitate to have Rick's back.

Swallowing hard to ward off the unsolicited memories creeping in, Carol gritted her teeth. "Don't mess with the medication; use them wisely because that's all we got. Lilly knows what needs to be done and will direct you, but don't count on her entirely. As you know, Tara, Alisha and Meghan are sick right now so she has her hands full. In my trailer, you will find the huckleberry broth-"

"She should stay back," Tony growled from his spot interrupting her instructions, arms woven across his chest. He was nodding towards Carol's direction next to Martinez, but didn't spare her as much as a glance, gaze stabbing daggers at his leader. "Nurse the sick. What's the point of a chick goin' out there? She ain't no fighter."

"Anyone of you knows what huckleberry looks like?" Martinez retorted defiantly to the objector, eyes darting around, anticipating for anyone to plead knowledge. It wasn't like he wanted Carol out there; he'd gratefully tag along with any other alternative. "Reckon you all have your answer," he finally concluded when everyone remained silent.

Tossing the half-drained cigarette he was smoking inches away from Carol's boot tips, Tony stood up and lazily slugged his way to her. She didn't budge as everyone around them remained stone still, holding their breaths, and Martinez nearly careened in front of her, squelching the smoldering tobacco under his heel. The two men were now engaged in a nose to nose glaring contest, heaving in each other's face. In the background, Mark tensed, but Alex motioned him to stay put with a raised hand.

"We got a problem here, Tony?" Martinez sputtered.

She didn't need this, someone defending her honor, she had her own back. And Martinez didn't need this, either, a rift between himself and his strongest men when the camp was in its most vulnerable contours. But she refrained from moving to grab him when Tony held his ground and he did the same, not wanting to give them the impression that she had any special power over their leader.

Thankfully, Pete jostled in the crammed space between them before the confrontation escalated in a chest to chest joust. "Just drop it, man," he urged, addressing Tony who finally took a step back. "He's right."

Nobody expected what happened next, neither the proposal nor the mouthpiece of it.

"I'll join her."

"No!" Martinez exclaimed and spun around, following the throaty offer from the other end of their helter-skelter circle as Carol's stiff fingers curled around the garment in the small of his back. His response wriggled out just a tad too fast, just a tint too hitched, gaze just a tinge darker than normal.

Carol didn't miss it and, much to her dismay, it was obvious that Brian hadn't either. The same inward cringe that jiggled an otherwise unfalterable poker face each time Martinez made use of his authority, biting out commands and imposing his will, ruffled around his eye patch. He refrained from leadership dibs and kept a low profile, but upon closer examination, it was conspicuous that this guy was neither used nor prone to executing orders. Brian was no sheepish devotee, no docile conformist. As much as he fought against it and pulled an Oscar worthy performance in the process, he was and probably would always be the general, never the pawn. Martinez tended to forget that the guy really used to be the Governor.

"I need people behind and reckon with Meghan laid up you better stick around," Martinez added hastily, striving for some damage control. "Pete will go with Carol."

"Sure," the man complied.

"Ok, grab your stuff and move, all of you," Martinez rounded up his speech without an even rhetorical question and hoofed it to Carol's trailer, his peripheral view catching the dim look passing between Tony and Brian. "We're running outta time."

Carol clicked the door shut behind her and hoisted the backpack over her shoulders, panting the pent-up distress of the previous scene. "Thank you," she whispered nervously. "When I said I was fine with whoever I was teamed up with, it didn't include Brian."

"That was close," Martinez rasped raggedly, nostrils flaring. "Too close. He's onto something and he's smart enough not to push too hard." They locked gazes and he strode her way, tightening the straps of the backpack under her armpits.

"When we come back, we'll deal with him," Carol said, eyeing him meaningfully. "Really deal with him this time, ok?"

Nodding his reluctant accordance at the undeniable impasse ahead them, Martinez grabbed the bottle of water she had left on the counter and shoved it in the side holder. "You always forget the water," he smirked.

Chuckling, Carol shook her head. "And you never do."

"Don't do anything stupid and don't play hero, you hear me?" he instructed vehemently, voice edged almost in a tirade, but his coarse hand trod a path down the bare skin of her arm as if to gainsay the callousness of his tone. "You don't need to prove a damn thing to none of us."

"Same goes for you," Carol countered, offering a tight-lipped smile, and shuffled away to add some distance between them. "You come down with any symptoms, you drop everything and get in bed immediately. We'll be back before you know it."

"Stay safe."

On impulse, the three-word casual response to this advice, the one that used to be articulated solely from Daryl and solely to her, and the inside joke of her reassurance to him, painfully clawed up her throat. _'Stay safe'_, voiced by Martinez and not Daryl stung like a slap in her face at that particular moment, when she was wrestling desperately every thought about him now that she was ready to immerse into the woods, the natural extension of Daryl's existence. _'Nine lives, remember?'_ addressing someone else would be the utmost blasphemy and she nearly moaned her debility to muster something else as the words clogged and evaporated briskly on the tip of her tongue. A cosmic shenanigan against her it was, dripping malice, too brutal to be forgiven. Dipping her head, Carol wheezed an inward breath and controlled her stuttering, eyelashes batting in frenzy to shun the moisture away.

"You, too," she finally mumbled and swiveled the doorknob.

xxxxx

Rarely did she get the chance to converse with him, mostly because every civilized exchange on his behalf was the subject of merciless ridicule and downright insulting barbs from Mitch. On a second account Carol had never tarried before that particular moment, Mitch and Pete were a lot like Merle and Daryl, the first violin and the underdog, with the sharp distinction that Merle had an embedded sense of code, questionable as it might have been –a hint of which Mitch had never revealed. So far, Pete's older brother had repeatedly proven himself to be a full-fledged opportunist, as loyal and dependable as snow, drifting whenever the wind of power blew him. Then again, she could be just losing the ultimate vestiges of a sanity sputtering out briskly, because everything and everyone seemed to remind her of Daryl, especially since the moment she set foot outside the camp and pelted headlong into the woods, the place Daryl's spirit inhabited intrinsically.

Thoughts of him hiking those same forests, trampling over that exact same soil, leaning over the same tree trunk she touched moments ago, thwarted her breath. If only he knew that she was co-existing with the Governor, that she was willfully putting her neck out there to save his adopted daughter, that her savior and newly acquired confidante was the same man that nabbed Merle and handed him over to the Governor… She wanted to die at the mere chance that Daryl would ever find out in what pit she had gotten herself into. If he didn't despise her already, he would hate her forever for these mistakes she wasn't even responsible for. The urge to hurry, gather the supplies allotted to her and fly back to the camp, partly to bring the sick ones what they needed to get better and partly to shelter herself again from this ubiquitous Daryl's presence suffocating her, forged wings on her legs and bequeathed her arms with a robotic speed.

"What do you think of Brian?" Pete asked out of the blue.

Carol froze, but willed her hands to keep moving, her back fixed on him. "I barely know the man," she muttered in haste to mask her trepidation, seemingly concentrated on weeding out huckleberries and stuffing them in her bag. Whether Pete was interrogating for his own account or as Mitch's lackey was impossible to be determined in advance. "Why?"

Stepping closer, Pete dropped his half-full bag, exhaling a lungful of air. "He seems like a decent guy," he drawled indecisively.

Carol's head whipped around when he crouched down next to her, meeting a quizzical gaze waiting for her to weigh in. She ignored it, keeping her cards close to her chest –Brian chitchat she didn't do. She would hear, yet knit up her own lips. "But?"

"But he spends time with my brother. People who get along with Mitch are rarely good news for the rest of us," Pete sighed, helping her haul out a well-rooted plant. "That's what happened with that man Martinez had to kick out in the end. He had no choice even though the guy had a family. But that happened a long time ago, before you joined us," he grumbled absently and instantly made a grimace, mentally scolding himself for veering off topic. "Anyway, what I mean to say is that Mitch grouping up with others is almost always bad news. Look what he did to you that day, with Mark and Tony fanning the flames."

"What Mitch does, it's on him. Not on you. You saved my life back then and I've had much worse than what he did to me anyway."

"He-he just-"

"He just called me a bitch two hours ago for trying to make him swallow antibiotics and save his life," Carol offered, smiling sadly. The man before her obviously hadn't fully realized in what mortal jeopardy Mitch's life was or, if he had, he was fighting back his fear by raising up all the reasons he had to stay mad at him. "He is who he is."

Pete exhaled, scrubbing his heavy eyelids with a set of filthy fingertips. "God, I'm so sorry."

"Don't apologize and don't feel bad about it," Carol said firmly, pushing a handful of herbs in Pete's bag now that hers was jammed. "I can handle men like your brother."

Pete narrowed his eyes, regarding her through a slit. "Father or husband?"

"Husband."

"Abusive?"

"To put it gently," she huffed out her sarcasm, squinting at him contemplatively.

"Didn't you ever meet a decent guy?" Pete asked sympathetically.

Carol pressed her eyelids shut. _Daryl_. "I did."

"And?"

"I betrayed his trust in every possible way," she muttered. After all this time and the absence of any trace of self-mercy never ceased to amaze her. "What about Mitch and you? Father?" she poked to change the topic, receiving a curt nod. "How did he die?"

Pete gnawed on his bottom lip, brows furrowed. He aimed at gauging her opinion for Brian and apologizing for his brother's gross behavior, not at having a shrink session. Incapable to assess if he considered this twist pleasantly unexpected or irritably blindsiding, he glanced up again and saw Carol's warm gaze, the one she used to advance unknowingly toward jimmying the locks of other people hearts and crawling herself inside, without game or pretention, without secret agendas. Sizing her up, he found the empathy glistening in her gaze sincere. "One day when I was seven, I was crunching one of those huge chocolate-chip cookies, you know? Apparently too loud for our old man's hangover," he drawled. "I ended up with two mashed in teeth and a broken nose. That same day, Mitch decided it was time for him to fire a gun rather than just clean it. He was thirteen."

Scooting up, Carol zipped her backpack and Pete mimicked her. "Best head straight to the cabin now. We have enough huckleberries and can always get more on our way back," she said quietly, voice rippling with emotion as she moved to sidestep him. Everything about that story reminded her of Daryl again, the little boy suffering in his abuser's hands, in the hands of the man who was supposed to protect him. And Merle, the only advocate he ever had.

"What happened to your husband?" Pete inquired, blocking her way, face pensive and brooding.

"Stuck a pickaxe in his head" she deadpanned, watching his features aligning, creases flattening in a vain effort to morph his abhorrence into nonchalance. The optical brawl lasted a few seconds before her lethal façade flickered away, replenished by a blossoming smile. "Well, he was bit and dead before I did it, but still…" Carol winked, lifting her shoulders as he let out an amused, thoroughly relieved chuckle.

"Next time you say this story, end it at 'Stuck a pickaxe in his head'," Pete snickered. "Makes quite an impact."

Mulling over it for a second, while they trekked the sedge-coated path to the cabin, Carol smirked at herself. "Maybe I will."

xxxxx

"Perks of leaving our backpacks in the car like idiots."

Michonne closed her eyes and sucked a stabilizing gush of air, propping heavily against an elm. Daryl's threadbare, color-washed rag, usually dangling indolently from his back pocket, was pressed on her shoulder, briskly saturated with the blood now branching through her fingers.

"Get back," Daryl murmured under his breath, squatting around to examine the set of footprints imprinted on the soggy ground. "I'll check this out and be right behind you."

"I'm fine," she groaned stubbornly, pouting at her wound. "Not going to bitch around for a damn scratch."

Sighing, Daryl tilted his neck, gaze flicking between the trail and his companion, pondering on his options. A scratch, it wasn't. When Michonne lost her footing and tripped over a log, landing hard on a stingy shrub, he had to pluck out the prickly twig lodged obliquely inside her shoulder while she squirmed and hissed like an injured tiger. And it was humiliation that bugged her more than the pain and hemorrhage, nevertheless. Proud, high and mighty and pig-headed, occasionally to the point of downright stupidity –just like him-, her adamant contumacy was sculpted on cemented foundations, impossible to bend, although it meant stomping her foot for the sake of a contemptuous rebellion against her personal twisted notion of insubordination. Hence, Daryl knew that any argument for them to split for their mutual benefit would be to no avail, grey matter and voice wasted on deaf ears. Either he gave up and they both retreated to the Fiat and the first aid kit, or he kept pushing forward with Michonne trudging hot on his heels.

He couldn't drop the trail before him, though. Not _this_ trail. Two pair of boots, one of them male-sized, but it was the other one that snared his unremitting focus. The feminine, light-footed, lickety-speed one. He knew he was losing his mind, it wouldn't be the first time he'd kidded himself, misinterpreted or even distorted the evidence at hand to his favor, but there was something vague and indecipherable about this catlike gait, something oddly familiar. He didn't recognize the boot print, but the character of this nibble trot was an entirely different story –impossible to miss amongst a million footprints. And it was fresh, fresher than fresh; the two trekkers were but minutes ahead of them.

"So, what's so special about that trail?" Michonne asked, mustering a feigned, straight-faced detachment as they both charged forward.

"Dunno," Daryl rasped, an onslaught of indistinguishable sentiment feasting on his chest. "Somethin'."

Ten more minutes of hiking, slower than Daryl craved and way faster than Michonne could keep up without mustering every grain of stamina and wearing her muscles out in the process, and they stepped into a tiny clearing. They paused for a second, taking in the aptly-built and well-preserved cabin looming amidst it, as different from the ramshackle shanties they often bumped into the woods as day from night.

"Get behind me or hunker down here," Daryl ordered without casting a peek at her, fully absorbed in countervailing thoughts, voice contorted into a sough.

"I'm fine, tough guy," Michonne bristled, squinting at him, a worrisome expression lacerating a deep groove across her forehead. "We're going inside together. No damn chance you're shutting me out of the party."

He didn't know why he heeded. After all these desperate months marching past him relentlessly and his inhumane efforts rounding up barren repeatedly, this was the very first time he sincerely had something; sure it was frugal and scanty, reduced to merely the backwash of a lead, but it was the most he had achieved thus far. And yet, he found himself chickening out, pulse throbbing to slit his veins open and breath suspended, completely unprepared and unschooled for either an elating, unforeseen success or a knee-smashing failure crowning all its predecessors.

He dreaded that _she_ would be behind that door. He dreaded that _she_ wouldn't. He didn't know which outcome was more terrifying.

He had failed to protect her after all; from herself, from Rick's misplaced self-righteousness, from her assailants, from whatever could have or already had happened to her in the last three and a half months –from his own dumb pride above everything else. What had he even done that last day he saw her, clearly distraught? Asked if she was all right, fooled himself that she really was despite every sign of the opposite and then run away like a bat out of hell. If he had ever bothered himself enough to give her _something_, then _everything_ could have been different. He had failed her so amply, utterly, unconditionally and irrevocably that a comber of unsolicited qualms whooshed over him: he was probably the last person she ever wished to meet again, that's the reason she hadn't waited for him in that pavement, right where Rick ousted her in the Taurus station-wagon.

First step up the porch and he felt light-headed, senses swimmy and uncoordinated. The second step he had to puff it up as the joint between his ankle and shin buckled simultaneously with his hands forgetting how to mechanically paw and steady the crossbow. Third and last step and the whole endeavor had peaked into a torment, oxygen tearing through his lungs, igniting tremors that convulsed his torso.

Michonne scorned at his scurrying attention as they flanked the door, the wooden slats of the porch screeching under the ragged soles of their waffle-stompers. The indistinct fussing from inside was replaced by dead silence the moment Daryl had mounted the first step. His wolf-like grace of elegant, noiseless movements long chucked into oblivion, relinquishing the place for the rowdy stumble of a flabby elephant betraying their presence.

"I'm going in first," she whispered barely audibly, receiving nothing but a glassy-eyed gawk in response that left her wondering if he was about to pass out and abandon her to deal with whoever the people inside were alone and half-crippled. She was still healthy as a horse compared to him, the deathly pallor spread across his features and a sternum bobbing up and down in frantic heaves. "Cover me."

Inching the door ajar a slash wide enough for her to skid inside, Michonne unsheathed her katana, ignoring the piercing pain on her shoulder. Surprisingly enough and much to her complacency, Daryl synchronized and kicked it wide open, storming inside in precisely the correct tempo and distance from her. A wheezing sword and a loaded crossbow came face to face with two raised barrels pointing straight at the heads of their owners.

There was a collective gasp as the woman opposite to Daryl jerked, momentarily losing her target while his own finger jiggled over the trigger like gelatin on a plate. Only the man Michonne had never seen before held his gun firmly trained on her. Her gaze vaulted wildly between Daryl and the woman across from them, who were staring at each other like thunder-struck stumps, not breathing, not blinking, not registering her agitation or the other man's lather, jaws hanging agape in a rictus of astounded incredulity.

It was Michonne's voice that perforated the utter stillness like a bullet riddling flesh.

"Carol?"

* * *

**To reassure you once more, this is a Caryl story, no doubts about it. Martinez has really helped Carol in ways Daryl firstly didn't and then couldn't because she was already gone. They both have a lot of things to regret and a lot of work to do to make it right now that they bumped into each other. I don't view the situation or their choices as simply right or wrong. They were both right and wrong at the same time and this story is about them finding their way (back) to each other. **

**There will be no love triangle, no nothing, not even a dilemma. Carol loves and respects Daryl. She also respects Martinez –he is the man who saved her both from Mitch and the wilderness and was the first to trust her after Rick exiled her. If you ever doubt how Carol feels about Daryl and Martinez, check her comparison between them in chapter 4. It's Caryl all the way. Bumpy and hard and painful, but Caryl.**


	6. Name One Time

**Hey everyone,**

**Ok, this one took a while. Holidays, flu, ff acting up and the fact that I wrote and rewrote it more than three times are some of the reasons for the delay… So, Happy New Year and I hope you like it :) I think it's the most angsty chapter so far.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

"_But you can't start. Only a baby can start. You and me - why, we're all that's been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that's us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can't start again."  
― __John Steinbeck__, __The Grapes of Wrath_

Relaxing her grip around the hilt in a pacifying gesture, Michonne lowered the katana to the floor, slowly scooting up with raised arms not to further spook the guy aiming at her. It was harder for her than she cared to admit, playing the peacemaker in that unlikely assembly of weaponry and haunted expressions, all jammed together in the slatted walls of the cabin. But there wasn't much light coming from Daryl and Carol's confrontation, frozen as they were, weapons still trained on each other.

With the katana threat crossed off, Pete angled his posture and shuffled closer to Carol, towering next to her. "Drop it," he bit out, turning his gun to Daryl.

He didn't blink. Crossbow still set in full-attack mode, but wobbling beneath a swerving grip matching hers down to a tee, so unsteady that even if they pulled the trigger, they had great chances of missing from a few inches distance. Pete ordered her something, but Carol found it impossible to peel her gaze off Daryl who stared right back at her with extreme scrutiny as if she was nothing but a figment of ingenious imagination way too resourceful for his liking. Finally, teeth grating with the scrappy sound of a key diddling against an unfit padlock, Daryl moved his crossbow to Pete, every facial sinew twitching heatedly. "Step away from her," he growled uncompromisingly.

"Carol!"

Entranced on Daryl up to that moment, ogling like she couldn't get enough of him, Carol made a hacking noise when Michonne's curt voice shattered her jumbled reverie, managing to catch her attention. It was only then that she cocked the safety back on her gun and let it drop on the floor with a dull thump, as if slapped back to consciousness.

"Pete, no!" Carol gasped, thrusting herself between the pointy bolt tip and a bullet itching to be shot. "Put your gun in the holster. I know these people, they're not dangerous. Please!"

"They sure look dangerous," Pete argued but complied grudgingly, glaring at Daryl who still refused to loosen up his stance.

"They're ok," Carol goaded, fighting for a breath, her hands gently pushing Pete's chest until he took a couple of steps back. Tilting her head on one side, she allowed her eyes to drift back to Daryl, holding her air in her lungs. "Let's take it easy, all of us," she whispered pleadingly and he lowered the crossbow, cussing under his breath.

What a few seconds earlier was a tight situation that didn't escalate to a gunfight inside the cabin by a hair, was now plain awkward. Pete was looking at Carol huffily, a thousand questions rutted across his brow, but his skeptical presence was downright slighted as Carol and Daryl retracted back to gaping at each other.

Michonne felt like a peeping tom, a nosy bystander prying on a reunion too private to be witnessed. It bugged her beyond comprehension that Daryl seemed so clammed up and altogether hostile towards Carol, as if she wasn't supposed to be found and if so, she wasn't supposed to be found alive and kicking and with companions. And at the same time, she wanted to grab Carol from the shoulders and shake her awake for the countenance of misery and disappointment spread across her features.

Breaths squirming out convulsed, in heaves, limbs hanging laxly, eyes flashing with cascades of sentiment. It wasn't this or that, something particular, positive or negative or with a modest neutrality inside them, a linear spectrum with dark lines depicting a different emotion here and there. It was a continuous spectrum radiating everything simultaneously. Pain, hurt, anger, grief, relief, blame, remorse, qualms, doubt, secrets. Love. A tension so thick and electrified it only fueled explosives to a powder keg already giving off sparks. She couldn't say if they were ripe to throw themselves in each other's embrace or start screaming venomous censures, slanders and bottled up torment too overwhelming to detonate in a controlled burning. They were still. And mute. Too still and too mute for anything good to come out of it.

"Hate to be the party pooper, but I'm bleeding here," Michonne grumbled just so that something prodded the rest back to action.

Nodding like a finely-tuned machine, Carol averted her gaze from Daryl and elbowed past Pete, pointing at the table. "Let me have a look," she croaked as Michonne sprawled down heavily on a chair.

Carol crouched down, rifling shakily through the contents of her overstuffed backpack and dragged out a first aid kit, chin trembling and eyes brimming with unshed tears, while Michonne watched Daryl prowling on her every reaction, his slit gaze prancing between the woman of his interest and the man escorting her. Pete had briefly climbed up to the top of the list of Daryl Dixon's least favorite person in the world. She only intervened when Pete started growling back at Daryl once again, moments before tempers flared.

"You wanna do this macho glare contest, why don't you spare us the testosterone, huh? Both of you get out to keep watch while I get patched up. Now."

Carol nodded to Pete as she trudged back to Michonne, so distraught Michonne thought she'd lose her footing and collapse on the floor, but she clutched the back of her chair and started scattering her medical paraphernalia across the table with her unoccupied hand. Her back was turned to both men and Michonne felt sorry for her when droplets of humidity splashed quietly on the wooden surface.

Her gaze flicked back to Daryl. "What are you gawking at me for, tough guy?" she went on undeterred when he didn't move an inch as Pete approached the door, lingering there to assess his next move. "You obviously have nothing to say. Let me catch up with Carol here."

Daryl frowned and sulked at her, forever peering over Carol's shoulders like he would make her face him on pure volition. Michonne winked at him and motioned towards the door, trying to convey the message that she was working for him and not against him. Without another word, Daryl gnawed on his cuticle, spun around on his heels and exited with Pete close on his tail.

"You're lucky you don't need any stitches," Carol rumbled blankly, stooping over the other woman's wound.

Piercing her with the ebony pearls of her eyes, Michonne wrestled to gauge her reaction. "I didn't think I'd see you ever again," she said guardedly and winced a viper's hiss as the disinfectant sprinkled across her sore, aflame abscess.

"Right back at you," Carol puffed out a shaky chuckle in response. There was no humor in it, no joy, no amusement. Just anguish.

"You ok?" she inquired, unfazed by the shortage of any incentive and warmth to ignite a casual conversation. "Safe?"

Nodding, Carol swallowed hard. "I found a group."

"We spent months looking for you."

Carol cocked a brow at the befuddling statement and moved behind Michonne to conceal the emotion squirting in grooves out of her every pore, her formerly dexterous fingers numbing with each ticking second, gradually turning into unyielding spikes. "We?" she mumbled quizzically and applied a den of ointment, more smearing the skin around the wound than actually salving the throbbing area.

"Daryl."

There was silence again, a long pause through which not the slightest gush of wind jarred the eerie stillness of the interior. A silence Michonne couldn't decipher now that visual contact between them was lost. The only signs of a living person behind her were the fingers curling and unfurling in frenzy on the back of her chair, and the cotton dabbed over her wound. Above all, there was a vibrant pitch in Carol's breathing, the whistle of gust wriggling through clogged pipelines.

Mouth too rusty to keep up with the wheels swirling override in her head, tongue ground between her molars, Carol was hyperventilating. To avow to either of them, Michonne or herself, that Daryl looking for her _after_ and _despite_ learning about the murders was the last thing she expected to hear was an understatement impossible to be voiced over the pure shock swindling heartbeats away from her chest.

"Oh."

"You might wanna bring down the attitude a notch or two, because that man out there just wouldn't quit searching for you," Michonne jibed, misinterpreting her behavior and craned her neck to get a surreptitious peek of Carol's expression. "And if you look at him the same way you look at me, you're gonna have a very pissed Dixon all over the place."

Shaking her head, Carol didn't budge. She wasn't afraid of Michonne. She hadn't been afraid of anyone for quite some time and that was her leverage, the driving force keeping her alive despite her profound indifference about her life. Two things she feared and they were both flaunted right in her face. One, Daryl's verdict about her. She thought she knew it, but Michonne's intel made her question the staunch conviction steering her life choices. Two, that the prison group, and Lizzie and Mika and Daryl most of all, could get anywhere near the Governor. But she also knew what she had to do to prevent that –at any personal cost.

"You shouldn't have risked your lives. Whatever happened to me, I had it coming."

"You deserved it, right?" Michonne grunted derisively. "You deserved being kicked out like that."

Securing the bandage on Michonne's shoulder, Carol rounded the chair again, wiping the stray tear rolling down her face. "I did what I did, Michonne," she countered evenly and uprighted her full stature, plastering a cold façade on the vertex of her rigid stance. "I won't play coy to you. I'm a lot of things, but a hypocrite I'm not."

Squinting up at her, still half-irked and half-haggard, Michonne's hard look softened at the defensive, ostentatiously emotionless aplomb above her. Piece of cake to read between the lines of Carol's meek attempt to gild the dazzling pain radiating off her retinas like solar flames scorching their own source of light. If that was what Rick construed as coldness and absence of repentance, he was wrong. Every pang of contrition was there, veiled under pursed lips, taut nerves and guarded passive aggressiveness. It was an act and not even a well delivered one. She cared too damn much, she was guilty and ashamed of herself and somewhere along the way had acquired secrets she was guarding now. Plain as daylight.

"I never pegged you for one," she mollified and scooted up. "But he looked for you and wouldn't quit no matter what. _Today_ we were looking for you."

"You should've talked him out of it."

"You think I didn't try?"

"Not everyone can be saved," Carol muttered stubbornly. "Daryl knows better than that."

Snickering her sarcasm, Michonne ran an exhausted hand across her face. "You think he'd do this for everyone?"

Carol's jaw was creaking as if the joints were about to be crashed any moment now. "I didn't deserve the time or the effort. Or the danger you put yourselves in. I didn't want to be found, Michonne. And I certainly don't need help."

Closing the space between them, Michonne gave her a hard look. "You know, all this I-don't-give-a-rat's-ass-about-myself attitude of yours reeks of self-loathing and a death wish. Been there, done that and I'm tellin' you nothing good can come out of it. You'll only end up hurting people who care about you."

"You don't know," Carol deadpanned. "You can't understand."

"Understand what? Tell me what's wrong, I can help."

Tell what? What was there exactly to be told or clarified between them all?

_I joined Martinez's group. He's the leader and my best friend back there. A few weeks ago the Governor joined us as well.__ I was dragged to the camp, tortured and held captive, and spent three months without knowing who my leader really was. Martinez then brought in the Governor and I wanted to kill him and he put me between a rock and a hard place when he forced me to think of Meghan and his family and really challenged me to make a conscious choice about being a cold-blooded killer. Now the flu is there and I care about these people, I want to use my knowledge and help save them. How much of this mess is really my fault? And what am I supposed to do? There. Now you know. Can you help? Can you understand? Or will you do exactly what Caesar thinks you will and get more innocent killed? You think you want the truth. You think you can handle it. That's easy to say when you don't know it._

Inwardly, she was squalling. Outwardly, she was shuddering head to toe, but knitted up her lips. It wasn't Michonne she dreaded. As much as she respected the dauntless, self-governing warrior, Carol could survive her contempt. But Daryl… From Daryl she _couldn't_ hide. From Daryl she didn't _want_ to hide and it was him she _had_ to hide from.

Boots thudded up the stairs, crossed the porch and came to a halt outside the door. "Please, don't let him speak to me," she implored, her aloof demeanor stampeding a full u-turn, crushing in a quagmire of sorrow, trepidation and panic.

Michonne exhaled a lungful of air, regarding her sadly. "All this time I couldn't stop him from looking for you," she said quietly. "And he was right all along. You really believe there's anything or anyone that can stop him right now? I just bought you some time to get your shit together."

"Michonne-"

"You wanna send him away, you do it yourself," Michonne's adamant tone cut her off before she could utter another word. "If that's what you want, why are you so upset about it anyway? You don't care so much I consider myself lucky I didn't need any stitches or you'd have stabbed me in the heart trying to stitch my shoulder with how bad you're shaking. What, you think I'm blind?" Michonne ambled to the door, loitering there a few seconds while Carol swabbed the freshly beaded tears with the heels of her hands. "Just a heads up. He didn't look for you to humor a whim. He'll try to bring you back."

The door creaked open. Michonne stepped out, Daryl stepped in and Carol mauled her hand around her neck, scuffling against the invisible manacle smothering her.

The creeping awareness that she wasn't going anywhere with him was claiming a big toll on his quivering temper even before her decision was made explicit. He had seen it crystal clear in her eyes, she wasn't coming back. And it had never occurred to him that he couldn't exactly knock her out and drag her despite her will. It had never occurred to him that there was no place for him to take her. After the discovery of the ransacked Taurus, haggling terms about Carol's return at the prison seemed redundant, almost profane, and had to remain on hold. Finding her was his top priority. Now that he had, though, he seemed neglectful. He had nothing to offer, to bribe the reluctance glistening in her gaze.

But he had seen something else, too. He had seen the tears and the secrets, all of them, things she wouldn't share no matter how hard he tried to coax them out.

And that chair, recruited in a symbolism Daryl couldn't quite put his finger on. He wasn't sure if it was supposed to depict a shield, a stronghold or something she could hide behind and, fleetingly, he wondered whether it was that she really was stupid or considered his emotion so shallow to believe that a few wooden slats and some woven bamboo would keep him away this time. Truth was, he didn't give a shit about semantics. This chair she was clinging to like it was a life buoy –he could snap it singlehandedly like a twig if it stood in his way.

"Pack your stuff, we're leavin'," he rasped, denying the facts screaming before him.

His voice rang barely audible, not due to the low volume, but because it was next to impossible for the sound to pierce through the impervious wall of drums buzzing in her ears. Carol's gaze slanted down, examining her white knuckles over the death grip she had on the back of the chair. She had come to terms with not breathing for a while now, but the acceptance did nothing to shunt the dizziness away. "How are Lizzie and Mika?"

"Fine." Daryl took a hesitant stride closer. "Askin' for you."

"Glenn? Sasha?"

"We brought the meds in time." Another stride. "They made it."

"Good," Carol mumbled, all shaken up and distressed beyond imagination as he kept approaching, bridging the distance between them. "Good. The others?"

"Everyone's fine," he cited like a robot and the next step brought him almost within arm's reach. "Maggie's pregnant."

"That's wonderful," she replied, cracking an idle, hopeful smile and glanced up at him, something unfathomable kindling deep inside her eyes as the news of the Rhees extending their little duo eased in.

It was a speck of warmth amidst the coldness of her gaze; no, it was a flame, a midday sun thawing away the iceberg. It was Carol, buried under layers and layers of protective walls, warranted or unsolicited defenses, trampling guilt and obstinacy of steadfast self-protection. He didn't miss it, even if he wasn't sure what she was so eager to protect herself from. Way beyond due time that he started registering her signs as it might be, he was never permitting another one to drop. He knew better.

"You look tired," Carol whispered, taking in the grey hues of overgrown hair tangled up with chestnut ones, the red veins crowning his azure gaze, paler than the summer sky outside. He seemed emaciated and older and her first instinct was to let everything burn in the camp and look after him.

Letting the wary remark slide, Daryl lifted his shoulders; not likely to muster any appropriate words to eloquently describe what he had been through. He wasn't even sure that the right diction to capture his devastating pain was invented in the first place. There were bigger issues snaring his focus, the scar across her cheek that wasn't there the last time his eyes lingered on her first of all.

The effulgent stare raking over her turned to withering. "Who did this?"

"Some guy. But that's all he did."

"You kill him?" Daryl asked boldly, a lethal spear vibrating in his tone.

Carol's head snapped, misunderstanding her own culpable conscience as _his_ accusation. "No," she bristled cynically and shot him a mean look, gritting her teeth. "Contrary to popular opinion, I don't walk around slitting throats."

"You should've," he retorted. "That asshole outside?"

"No."

"Who?"

"You don't know him."

Fidgeting nervously, he clenched his fists. She wouldn't give him anything to atone and redeem himself, no one to kill to avenge for a ludicrous compensation of every failure skulking in his gut. "Best get movin'," he tried again, the vanity of the effort bleeding deep. "We're burnin' the light. The Fiat is a couple of miles down the forest edge." That she wasn't coming no matter what was only half the picture here. The other half was that he wouldn't, never and under any circumstances, make peace with that.

Carol swallowed hard, striving against the state of palpable agony belting through her. His persistence; it wasn't supposed to be there. His pressure; it wasn't supposed to be there either. His heat, his tension; nothing was supposed to be there.

"Drive safe."

"The prison's our home," Daryl yelled out of the blue, banging his fist on the table.

"Yours, not mine anymore," she breathed harrowingly, deciding that panting in heaves was less vertiginous than withholding the air in her lungs. "I'm not welcome there."

Erupting like a volcano, spewing lava and rocks, Daryl snatched the chair and smashed it on the floor, its joint components heaping into a dismantled mess. A bustle echoed from outside, Pete and Michonne brawling as the former wanted to bust in and the latter barked that Carol was as safe as one could get.

"I've spent months lookin' for you!" Daryl roared, words berating upon Carol as his forefinger jammed on her sternum and her back slammed flat on the wall. "I thought you were dead! I thought- And for what? So you've got yourself all cooped up in a white picket fence dream or somethin'?"

"More like something, really," she choked out, a muffled whimper dripping misery, despair and non-negotiable resolution –the irony of his indictment, 'cooped up in a white picket fence dream' _with the Governor_, sluicing down hard. "It's just a group, Daryl."

_A group where Martinez is the leader and the Governor just joined._

Pacing the full length of the tiny room, Daryl threaded his fingers through the tousled strands of his overgrown hair, hyperventilating frantically. "Who's the leader and where is it?"

"I can't tell you that," Carol stated matter-of-factly. "You know I can't."

One final kick at the table and he started gnawing on his cuticle, brooding on his next move as a deep laceration sliced his forehead in half. His gaze darted around, landing on the bags of huckleberries. Two of those. And a backpack stuffed with pills and all sorts of medical equipment. It didn't take a genius to put two and two together. He looked up at Carol who was pathetically memorizing every muddy stain glossed over the tips of her boots.

"That group you're with..."

Following the direction of his eyes, she nodded. "It's spreading fast. They're waiting for us to get back."

"Peachy," he sputtered, nostrils flaring. "Beat it then. We're done."

Complying without further debate, Carol teed off gathering her stuff. If her body reaction to hurting Daryl was spontaneous combustion later on, then so be it. If he resented her forever after today's despicable audacity, it also didn't matter. What mattered was that Daryl and the prison crew were safe and sound and away from the Governor.

Without farewells or other heartfelt words, she marched determinedly to the door, pawing the knob. Suddenly, she stilled and paled before flicking it open as the dawning realization whooshed over her. "You will follow me," she said blankly.

No question mark of doubt warping her tone, just the blatant declaration of an indisputable fact. He'd follow her, just like that –a casual comment about the weather. He hadn't stopped following her. He knew the crimes that got her exiled and she was erroneous all along. He had come after her since day one and never quit until time, space and fate, all rallied and conspired together for mercy and atonement, for thrusting them back in each other's orbit. She had bent her neck at Rick's decision, but Daryl had bent the cosmic volition instead. Michonne was right, he wouldn't stop now. He had fought for her when she gave up on them both. It was a first, but it held the splendor of a once in a lifetime wonder.

Daryl shrugged provocatively and she let her hand fall laxly by her side. Tossing the supplies next to the door, Carol walked back to him, resigned, defeated, too drained and too much in love to keep up this pointless warfare, on the one hand. Too desperate to protect him to give up, on the other.

"Fuck, Carol," he seethed as they locked gazes, panting in each other's face. "You didn't wanna grovel your way back? You were afraid of Tyreese? I can buy all that. But you knew I was comin' for you. All you had to do was fuckin' stay put right where Rick left you!"

Chuckling bitterly, Carol shook her head, gloomily regarding the two slender veins throbbing across his temples.

"What? You knew I was comin'! I always come!" he raved. "Shit… Name one fuckin' time that I didn't come!"

"Name one time that you went against Rick's will," she finally countered dimly at the blazing haze before her, numb and groggy.

He had absolutely zero counter-arguments to that and the sour reasonableness of her conclusion only served to whet his wrath. "What am I supposed to do now, huh? You want me to just leave? Fuck you, Carol! I don't need this shit!"

Everything happened simultaneously then. She gasped "Don't-" and he was already all over her. Dainty fingers tugged on the greasy textile of his sleeveless shirt the exact same moment he cupped her nape and slammed her against his chest. In a heartbeat, she was ensconced in a vast embrace clamping around her vice-like, sobbing violently in the crook of his neck. Daryl's chin burrowed on the top of her head, one palm caressing soothing patterns on her back. He snuggled her closer and she clung to him like there was no tomorrow.

"I missed you," Carol soughed despite her better judgment. Consecutive electrical currents zapped her in and out and she relished the sensation of this artless hug tightening more around her in response. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."

With an onslaught of affection he had only ever exhibited towards Judith, rocking Carol tenderly as if she was a baby, Daryl kept his overflowing emotion in tight reins, lids batting in frenzy to stave off the tears beetling over his eyelashes. All those pungent, relentless and pertinacious 'why's mincing his sanity. Why his arms jiggled to engulf her into an embrace, why he had to wrestle the urge not to squeeze her breathless against him, why this fragile china doll was such a precious cargo, a cargo he wanted to snare in a clinch forever. He didn't need to shove them in the back burner of his mind; all these questions didn't scare him anymore. Not compared to the price he had paid for ignoring them. Deep down he knew the answers and he had firsthand experience of what downplaying their significance had pelted upon them both.

This match –he wasn't losing it.

"Stop cryin' and tell me what the fuck's goin' on," Daryl crooned, the harsh words winging out like a feather whisper.

_Martinez is the leader of my group. He was the one who nabbed Merle and handed him over to the Governor._

_The Governor is there, too. He's not the Governor anymore, he goes by as Brian these days. And he's a family guy, he has a woman and a child._

Carol found herself plopped on a chair while Daryl dragged another one and sank heavily into it, slouching inches away from her.

"Tell me."

"You'd never understand, Daryl," she sniffled, her resolution cracking. "I could never make you understand."

"Try me."

Abandoned cars, he hotwired them. Barricades, he crushed them. Locks, Merle had shown him how to jimmy pretty much everything. Materials in general, he contrived ways to work around, through and past the obstacles. But Carol? Sagging across from him as she was like the weight of the world hunched her shoulders, fingers laced, glassy-eyed and guilt-smitten, a safe he had no idea how to violate. Dynamite was required to dislodge any ideas fixed on her mind when things were normal; what it would take this time, he couldn't say.

And yet, there he was. No strategies, no tricks. His exquisite physical stamina useless when the answer to the riddle was a spell he wasn't acquainted with. All he had was a rough, crude honesty and a heart dangling from his sleeve.

"I didn't know," he admitted huskily, the low drawl of his voice vibrating with an inconspicuous fervor. "I didn't know what leavin' with no goodbyes, not knowin' if the other person is dead or alive can do to someone. I didn't know where not listenin' to someone's cries for help can lead to. But you ain't alone now." Everything was there, written across an angst-ridden face. The confession of his mistakes, the acceptance of more than his rightful share of responsibilities, the apology for the time he left her behind without a word, the plea for a second chance. "I know _now_. Try me _now_."

She had one great victory in her life; him. She had failed to actually have him for herself, but this had never been her number one goal. She knew what people used to see in him at first sight. A redneck. A lethal hunter. An ill-mannered, ready to throw a tantrum bully. Under the prism of misleading appearances, the man in front of her was but the sum of ill mannerisms, a nefarious family name, a mysterious past, the encroaching shadow of an oppressive brother and the crossbow wielding badassery. She also knew what people missed for not bothering to take a second, more careful look. A knight in an armor sullied with dirt, sweat and blood. A real hero, ready to jeopardize his life to save them. That was the only outstanding piece of masterstroke she ever recalled holding in such great prestige: now everyone saw Daryl through her eyes, now the man that suffocated beneath invisible pliers back in Hershel's farm was standing straight-backed, proud and noble and honorable, claiming the rightful position for his value. No credits for who he was ought to be bequeathed on her. But her tiny share for helping this man come to the surface and stay afloat was no trivial accomplishment in Carol's eyes. In a life where mistakes piled up a mountain, she had got this right.

But she had reduced herself into a killer of people in need. And then into a group member along with his worst enemies.

An illusion it was, that phony hope that they could start again. They couldn't. She would never come back from the choices she made.

She wanted to say 'no' and for it to be final. She wanted to stomp her foot and rant that he was too late, that there was nothing salvageable in her for him to fight for. She wanted to order him to let her go and not follow her, because her loyalties now lay with her new group, because there was a man back in the camp she owed everything to and she couldn't keep hatching schemes to betray the trust of every person and group sheltering her. She wanted to at least declare that new beginnings and re-scribbling history were an inexistent notion, only rekindling in her chest because she was a stupid, weak bitch who opted for murder and treachery whenever trapped in an impossible situation.

"Ain't gonna let you pull away."

Daryl, all raw pain and suffering, rubbing her own words into her face. How long had it been since she told him that exact phrase, declaring that she was present and armed for war, ready to fight for him? A little less than two years maybe. Time enough for everything to change, twist and pulverize and for them to exchange roles.

Possessed by a sinister force, Carol sealed her eyes and moaned her despair, the foundations of her firm resistance surrendered to flames, her already limping composure frayed in crumbs. It was logic that got her thus far, for better or worse when that frosty crust engulfed her heart. Logic and cold pragmatism, mathematical calculations defying emotion -the reason she didn't recognize the stranger staring back at her in the mirror, the reason she was still alive. Logic was right, logic was always right; she needed to protect him and it didn't matter how severely she hurt him in the process. That logic resisted Daryl's calloused pain, willed her to tarry in her close-lipped ferment for however long it took to break him and not be broken by him. Her logic was immune to his pain, but her heart… Her heart was butchered by it, squished into embers. Intentionally hurting Daryl was the one step downhill she hadn't taken yet, the red line of her choices. Her heart squirmed and howled, vaulting against her ribs like a caged beast until it broke free and clobbered that lucid logic to a pulp and instead of 'no', she said, "Not with Pete outside." It just slipped, she didn't mean to say it, but once the words soared in the air between them, there was no taking them back.

He didn't mean to either; his hand just shot out with a newly acquired free will on its own and grabbed hers. That half-step of retreat was all the victory he needed. "Then when?"

"In three days," Carol blurted hastily, fingers curved around his. A mouthpiece she was, a marionette, speaking and moving without control of her words or limbs, directed by a masterful manipulator. "Here. At night."

His features tensed, twitching as if he was preparing for war, and a crippling urge to hold on to her rampaged his chest. "Tomorrow," he countered.

"No way I can leave tomorrow." Carol's puffy, red-rimmed eyes skittered around, sojourning at the bags of huckleberries and then back at him at such a loss that, momentarily, he forgot his own turmoil and took pity on her. "But in three days, I'll come."

"Fine."

"Don't tell anyone you found me, please. Do you think Michonne-"

"She knows how to keep her mouth shut," Daryl reassured. "I'll sneak out after things get quiet. It's a two hour drive and one more hikin'. I'll be here past midnight." He was babbling, words jettisoned curt, fast, slashed, contorted into a moan. The moment he had finally got a hold on her, the very same moment he had to witness her fade away in shards of smokes again. For the first time in his life he had a lot to say and no time to. "Go."

He had counting to do; same old drill to survive at the prison. Two days and ten hours that would be. Two hundred eight thousand eight hundred seconds starting from now. Not for another hopeless quest, but for a scheduled meet-up with her. Hunting, helping with the fences, searching for the rat feeder would keep him busy in the meanwhile. Somehow, he acknowledged in advance that the wait would be longer this time. It was gravity that attracted him to her and laws of nature were almighty.

She had chores to do, too. Tend to the sick, fix up more IVs, save those who could be saved, help bury the rest. Lie. To everyone. Betray the man who had put his blind trust in her. Outtalk, outsmart Martinez and Brian. Outrun them if necessary to get back to Daryl. She had a lot to do, duties demanding her unremitting attention starting from now. But she would find the way. It was a power stronger than will.

Shuffling back to the door a bit unsteadily, Carol once again looped the backpack around her shoulders and retrieved the huckleberry bags, hand on the knob. "Promise you won't follow me?"

Daryl nodded. "You safe there?"

"Most of them are good people. I take care of them, they take care of me."

"Most of them?" he growled, brow furrowed.

"You know how groups are, Daryl. Never black or white." This time the knob swiveled. "But I'm fine. General consensus is that people like me."

And with that, the door flung open and she vanished, out of sight once again, only the gush of wind bouncing the wooden board back and forth divulging that she truly was there a moment ago.

Plodding to the window with great exertion, Daryl watched her padding down the steps heavy-footed, an unintelligible slur smudging her movements as she leaned over Michonne and whispered something to her ear. He watched Michonne nodding, patting Carol's hand on her shoulder. And then he watched her trotting over to Pete, her body language urging the man to move.

"Bullshit, Carol," he muttered a mere second before she and her companion disappeared behind the tree line, nothing more than a pulsating hum wriggling out between his lips. "I liked you first."

* * *

**You know, I may be in the minority here, but I actually believe this is true… I do think that Daryl liked her first :) **

**Maybe some of you are angry with Carol, but I think she's really caught between a rock and a hard place. I have no intention to portray her as a flawless Mary Sue. Mistakes and character flaws are what make human beings unique and interesting and what made me fall in love with Carol and Daryl and the Caryl pairing in the first place. Plus, it remains to be seen if Daryl is really ready to face the truth about Carol's new group… Despite the despair and the impossible situation they are trapped in, though, maybe now there's a ray of hope. **

**I also wanted to try my hand at a Michonne/Carol scene, the potential of their dynamic is intriguing to me. Hopefully, it wasn't disappointing :)**

**So, what do you think?**


	7. About Alliances

"_It is a power stronger than will. Could a stone escape from the laws of gravity? Impossible. Impossible, for evil to form an alliance with good."_

―_Isidore Ducasse_

She was quiet during almost the entire trek back to the camp, tarrying in a brooding silence, and Pete couldn't decide if she was deliberately ignoring him or was genuinely oblivious of his hawkish supervision. Her eyes were wide and bleary, the muscles of her features taut and lips occasionally twitching as if she was engaged in an inner quarrel he had no access to. He knew she had wept inside the cabin, the whitish remnants of tears arraying in scattered, zigzag lanes down her face, thronging a bit across the crusty skin of the scar on her cheek, were incontrovertible attestants of the turmoil she was now wrestling to contain within a detached mask.

When a stray walker snarled at them, Carol swiftly unsheathed her Bowie and plunged the blade in its temple, landing hard on the twice deceased corpse. She wiped the gunk-dripping knife off on her pants and laboriously puffed her way up again. Gaze lingering on the slumped walker, Pete wondered where all this flux of somnolence radiating off her stemmed from, before dragging his eyes back to her face.

"What was that about?" he inquired.

Carol lifted her shoulders in mock nonchalance. "A walker."

"I meant what happened back in the cabin."

"People from my old group," she mumbled quickly; too quickly, as if she was prepared for the question and he didn't miss the way she lowered her gaze.

"I thought that guy hurt you," he drawled when she charged forward once again, forcing her to devolve her pace and twirl around.

"That guy is the last person on earth who'd ever hurt me," Carol retorted gravely, almost inimically, with a vehemence Pete had never experienced from her when addressing him.

Cringing, Pete walked past her, listening to her unusually heavy gait tagging along behind him. He realized that he might have underestimated her, misled by the silk voice and warm eyes, the kindness and the nurturing nature. But she wasn't just the woman that nursed them, cooked tasty meals with frugal ingredients and did their filthy laundry. She wasn't just the woman playing shrink whenever they had their goddamn blues and existential crises. After almost four months of being with them, she was also the woman who had remained a mystery to most, for whose past they knew nothing. She was also the woman who guarded her secrets and guarded them well, a woman who knew how to protect what she considered hers. She was also the woman who had stuck a pickaxe in her abuser's head _after_ he died, but who had stuck that pickaxe nevertheless to plead her emancipation. She was just both.

"Why all the secrecy then?" he pushed more. "I should've been present in the discussion."

"Unfinished business, none of your concern really," Carol dismissed him, gently yet conclusively, and the finality in her tone permitted no leeway for negotiation or further argument. "We didn't exactly part under perfect circumstances last time."

"I'm gonna have to tell Martinez about that."

"I understand."

xxxxx

"So, you both lean towards Jake," Rick ascertained, voice hushed.

Exchanging a concerned look, Sasha and Bob nodded in accordance.

"He's been acting weird and is the only one without an alibi," Sasha maintained.

"If Glenn hadn't found the breach in time, the yard would've been swamped with walkers. Who knows how many new graves we'd be digging right now?" Bob muttered, crossing his arms over his chest. "This was sabotage, Rick, much worse than feeding dead rats to them. You have to take action."

"I need proof that it's him. Acting weird or claiming he was sleeping in his cell alone, it's nothing. I have nothing to pin the breach on him. I need proof. Or a confession."

"But everything points to him, really," Sasha whispered, scanning their bearings for indiscreet ears.

Shaking his head, Rick held his ground. "Sorting out motive from evidence is thin ice."

Bob sighed, lighting a cigarette, face pensive. "Jake's been unstable since he lost his wife from the flu."

"Who hasn't?" Rick threw back the ball. He'd be the last person on earth to consider grief a crime, even when it came hand in hand with unhinged and spasmodic behavior. After all, on what grounds and by what right? Jake had undergone a period of severe depression after the illness, he was still in a very dark place, but had never really compromised anyone else. Darting a contemplative gaze between his self-proclaimed deputies, the temporarily basted closed breach on the fence and the walkers flocking out of it, wrapping their rotten digits around the wire, he shared some of the thoughts racking his mind. "Up until three days ago, we were all convinced without doubt that Carol was the rat feeder. Then Sasha found another dissected rat. Before today, _you_ were my number one suspect," Rick droned pointedly, staring at Bob. "Dissecting the rats in that surgical way, it takes skill, someone with training."

"And now?"

"Sasha says you two were together the entire time. Sounds like an alibi to me."

"We _were,_" Sasha reiterated tenaciously. "Jake grew kettle before the end of the world. A little experimentation and you have your skill. And he's talking about us leaving the prison and seeking something else the entire time. He hates this place, his wife's grave is here. If that's not a motive, then I don't know what is."

"I'll keep an eye on him," Rick complied. "But we need more. We need evidence that he's guilty."

"How will you punish him if you find proof?" Bob mused curiously, taking a long drag from his tobacco.

"We'll vote."

Two heads snapped up simultaneously at the statement, two pairs of eyes inspecting Rick with sheer incredulity. "We'll vote?"

"Yeah. All of us."

"And what if we decide to kill him off?" Sasha floundered. "It's not like we can trust him to stay away if we just kick him out."

"Then I'll do it," Rick deadpanned. "But whoever wants someone dead or out of here will have to live with the burden of his vote. I ain't making another decision alone. Look what happened the last time…"

"You were right about Carol, Rick," Sasha soothed, regarding him with compassion, understanding and a pinch of agitation. It was always easier to expect someone else to take responsibility and deal with a threat or a problem, wipe it out and take the blame for it, then suffer the consequences and take the blame. Wanting Jake out, exiled or executed was one thing, voting for it was an entirely different story. One had to live with his conscience after that. Sasha wasn't sure how she'd be able to sleep at nights after condemning someone, directly or not, to death. "You had to act fast, the council was either sick or away. What else could you do?"

"Wait," Rick muttered wearily. "I'd still have Daryl and Michonne here if I had waited one day."

"And Ty would kill her or Daryl and him would kill each other and I'd probably try to kill Daryl if he hurt my brother," Sasha insisted.

"And I'd never let anyone lay a finger on Sasha," Bob chimed in. "You did the right thing for the group. You saved this place from bloodshed."

"Maybe," Rick nodded, narrowing his eyes. "But it left us weaker."

Clasping his shoulder, Bob shot him an encouraging look. "You can count on us, man," he said firmly. "I know you see Daryl as your brother. That doesn't mean the rest of us don't have your back."

Rick's chapped lips quirked upwards, deriving mettle by the reassuring words. It was nice to have his intentions acknowledged every once in a while, to have people reaffirm their faith in him and his leadership skills.

"About Jake," he rasped. "He doesn't strike me as the traitor type."

"Did Carol strike you as the killer type?" Sasha shrugged. "People aren't what they seem to be. This world changes them."

"Yeah…" Bob whispered, gazing at a distant point. "One day you wake up and you are a changed man."

All the three of them fell silent, each immersed in dim thoughts better left unuttered when Hershel stalked out in the yard with Judith in his arms, the light tilt of his footing almost imperceptible in virtue of the prosthetic leg. He approached the trio and passed Judith into Rick's open embrace. After a few minutes, Sasha and Bob excused themselves and the two men were left alone.

Hershel advanced a friendly smile. "I might have overheard some stuff."

"The Jake part? Do you think it's him?"

"I know nothing about profiling and detective work," Hershel offered gently. "I'm just an old vet who knows a thing or two about crops. But this Jake thing, I don't know. It seems all too obvious to me."

"You know, being an officer is boring to death most of the times," Rick droned with an idle smirk. "Bureaucracy, paperwork, barely any action. You have a dead wife, most of the times the husband did it. The person with the motive or no alibi is guilty, ninety-nine per cent of the cases. It's the exceptions that make good movie material, not the rule."

"So, Jake?"

"He's a good suspect. He could easily have the knowledge, he has the motive, he had the chance…"

"But?"

"But the person feeding the walkers started before the flu. And back then Jake didn't have a motive," Rick murmured. "I don't like it. So many things don't line up. At first I thought it might be a child…"

"You thought of Lizzie," Hershel corrected. "Not just any child."

"It never made much sense, though," the ex-sheriff admitted. "Michonne was right. Everything is too premeditated. Too well thought out for a child to be behind it. And spreading dead rats across the fences is luring, not feeding."

"Maybe at first it really was someone who humanized the walkers like I used to, who knows? Then our little inside traitor got inspired by that and copycatted it to blur the waters and lead us away from his true plan."

Rick shook his head. "Far-fetched."

"I don't have an alibi about today either, by the way," Hershel said softly. "I was alone in the library reading about peas and wheat, but there's no one to confirm it. And I think the moment Glenn discovered the breach was wonderfully convenient. Seconds before walkers invade into the yard. It was almost a miracle, or a coincidence that he just happened to patrol that exact spot that exact moment. But then again the universe is rarely so lazy. Guess no one will ever suspect him, the man who found the breach. And Maggie… She has no reason to undermine the prison, but during pregnancy, hormones can do quite a number on a woman. I guess she could claim temporary insanity…"

"You trying to help me or confuse me more?" Rick bit out his annoyance, furrowed brows jutting.

"All I'm saying is be careful choosing your alliances," Hershel placated.

"You don't trust Bob and Sasha?"

"I have nothing against them. But they gave you what you wanted to hear. A convenient solution to the traitor, reassurances about the choices you made…"

"You know, by sending Carol away, I did prevent bloodshed," Rick bristled, focusing back on his daughter to avoid the piercing gaze transfixed on him. "I could use some credit about that for a change."

Ducking his head, Hershel searched for Rick's eyes. "I might have voted her out, Rick," the old man said slowly. "I might have. It ain't like we could keep her incarcerated for ever and it ain't like Daryl could keep guard of her cell twenty-four seven. Eventually things would get outta control. For her own good as well as for the rest of us, I might have voted her out."

Finally locking gazes with him, Rick eagerly anticipated the next words.

"But I wanted to hear her side of the story first. I mean, Carol? A cold-blooded killer? Come on… I _might_ have voted her out, but I would have never, _ever_ voted for you or for anyone else, my daughters included, to hog my vote."

It wasn't what he expected and Rick gritted his teeth.

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. John 15:13," Hershel murmured solemnly.

"And I haven't?" Rick hissed. "I've sacrificed everything for you people."

"All I'm saying is that you ain't the only one…"

xxxxx

Every now and then, he'd grumble or cuss something incomprehensible under his breath, smacking the steering wheel. Michonne cast him a sidelong glance, carefully calculating her diction choice.

"You found her."

Scoffing, Daryl crowed out the most metallic, drizzling acerbity cackle Michonne had ever heard. "Man, it turned out good, didn't it?"

"You did a lot of talking for one day, gotta give you that. Maybe enough for a month," she offered. "Even though most of what I heard was yelling. Was it all necessary?"

He dodged the question, countering another one. "What did she tell you when she came out?"

Chewing on her bottom lip, Michonne registered the apprehension seeping from every pore of him. He seemed ready to turn the Fiat around and drive back, but there was a riveting factor she wasn't granted insight to stopping him. "To make sure you get back safe."

Daryl propped his elbow on the window frame and pinched his mouth, murmuring a barb along the lines of how ironic it was for Carol to worry about _his_ safety.

"She didn't think you'd look for her," Michonne sighed, gazing at the specter of blurry, shapeless landscapes coming into view and then fading away as the car flew along on the asphalt.

"She's a fool."

"Did she have any reason to believe the opposite?"

"I'm a fool, too, ok?" he barked at her. "We're both goddamn idiots! That's what you wanna hear?"

They didn't exchange another word until they arrived at the prison, where Daryl headed straight to his cell, not offering the tiniest of explanation as to why this time their absence lasted less than a day.

xxxxx

Even hewed in open field, amidst vegetation and trees, the stench of vomit and blood, connoting nothing but death and decay, was the first smell to filter through their nostrils the moment Carol and Pete entered the camp. Other than that, the atmosphere was eerie, hacking and retching sounds soared outside from the open windows of the trailers.

So many tasks waiting to be taken care of, the clock was ticking against them, snatching longevity and survival chances away from them and all Carol could think about was Daryl, their gut-wrenching reunion and their next meet-up. Logic and heart, duty and desire, never lining up, never overlapping.

Erin was the first to throw herself in Carol's embrace as soon as she came into view. She didn't expect to find her there. Apparently, Erin really had just a cough and nothing more, not _that_ cough. As always, the woman was fidgeting alone at the outskirts of the remotest trailers, cowering away and distancing herself from the loud commotion of people brawling and arguing heatedly in the middle of the camp. Had it been within her powers, she would have plugged her ears to altogether shut herself out. Typical victim of abuse down to a tee. Carol knew the signs from first-hand experience, she could relate; heck, she used to _be_ Erin.

"Thank God you're back," Erin whispered in Carol's ear.

"Don't worry, we found everything we were looking for." She returned the embrace and drew back, offering a sincere smile. "The others?"

"They came back a couple of hours ago. They brought the meds you asked for."

With a pat on her shoulder, Pete hurried past her, trotting to the bickering that escalated fast when Alex and Mark butted chests. "What's going on?" Carol asked but Erin shrugged, shaking her head.

"I don't wanna know. When Tony came back, he was already coughing. But he won't lie down no matter what I say."

Orbiting around her, the woman was looking for guidance, too weak-willed to take action, reminding Carol of how she used to cling to Lori the first days in the quarry. "I'll see what I can do about it," she blurted absently, unloading her cargo in haste. Despite the investigative peeks she shot to the others, she still couldn't spot the three people she was searching for. Lilly, Caesar and Brian were nowhere to be seen and her precarious mindset staggered. "Maybe if I talk-"

Erin grabbed her shoulders, demanding her unremitting attention. "Nothing."

"What?"

"Don't do a damn thing," she bit out poignantly, eyes beaded. "He wears himself out, maybe he dies."

Carol's skin crawled at the woman's ferment. Erin wished Tony dead; she couldn't do it herself and she couldn't break free from his shackles, so she had pinned her hopes on the illness. She was a God-fearing person, but dared to commit that sin.

As every word waned unspoken on the tip of her tongue, Carol felt like she was going to pass out. Everything weighed too damn much. The camp, the prison, the illness, Michonne's blunt honesty, Daryl's raw pain, the Governor, Caesar. Daryl, Daryl, Daryl… Now Erin, the abused victim, the perfect projection of her older self, lugging to the surface memories Carol wished buried and cemented under a truckload of oblivion.

She had wished Ed dead. Sophia had spent her precious childhood witnessing her mother getting beaten and hospitalized. Carol had always shielded her from Ed's outbursts, but this did nothing to mollify Sophia's permanent agitation around her father, the way she instinctively hunched and shrank to become invisible. The feral ebullience that stirred in Carol's gut when she smashed Ed's head with the pickaxe Daryl handed her was beyond any elaborate description. She had cried, of course, sobbed bitter tears of remorse over his eviscerated, prone, _dead_ figure but not even one salty droplet was for him, her torturer. The tears were for her and her daughter, for their wasted lives in the tethers of that man. She had wished his death time and time again. Nemesis to the unadulterated blasphemy Carol had committed caught up with them right after, comeuppance backfired mercilessly in Sophia's freckled face. Between the cluster of abandoned vehicles in the highway, the group was scavenging trunks for whatever was edible or remotely useful and she had peeled her hawking supervision off Sophia for just a split second, distracted by the soft fabric and radiant red of the cloth in her hands. And that split second had proven enough.

After that, Daryl had kept her alive. First, giving her hope. Then training. Finally, instilling into her brain that she was strong enough to survive.

It was a good thing Erin had no children, nothing to be ripped away from her. And it was a good thing Carol didn't believe in God anymore. It was a bad thing the Daryls of this world could be counted on the fingers of one hand –Erin was unlikely to find one. Unless Carol took it upon herself to protect her.

"Take these." Carol handed her the bags of huckleberry, her heart squelched from the inhumane effort it took to sequester Sophia and Daryl to the backburner of her mind. "Can you boil it for me? Make sure every sick person has a mug?"

Erin nodded and Carol was already spinning around, eager to get to the others when Erin's hand whipped out, wrapping around her wrist.

"Carol," she croaked, voice hushed as a full spectrum of worries and fears flashed through her gaze. "Two died already. Mark's father and Steve's son."

Covering her mouth with her palm, Carol gasped. "Sammy? Oh my God, he was…"

"Six," Erin murmured, wiping the tears welling up in her eyes. "Tara is a bit better, but Alisha's bleeding from the eyes. And Meghan is coughing up blood, too."

"How are Steve and Kelly holding up?"

"Not well."

Mustering her composure back in place, Carol heaved a stabilizing breath. "Go fix the broth, Erin," she urged empathetically. "We'll get through this, I promise."

The next thing she knew, she was running to the others.

"You're no boss of ours." One of the older people stepped up to Tony.

Storming into the man's personal space, Tony flaunted a finger in his face. "You need someone to lead your ass!"

"We can't lie down like princesses and do our nails until everyone's dead," Mark backed him up.

"We should vote on who leads, right?" Another one voiced. "That's how Caesar runs this place."

And then another one, Rachel, a young girl in her early twenties. Carol had trained her herself and now she was confident enough to grope the hilt of the knife looped around her belt. "You can't just take over."

"Make that stupid bitch shut up," Mitch yelled from the inside of his adjacent trailer, shored up on the window above his cot.

"What?" Rachel yelled back.

"Hey, calm down! Calm down! All of you." Pete jumped right in the middle of everything, extending his arms in a mute plea for the tempers to loosen up, tone unswerving and confidently patronizing. "We need each other now more than ever. The only way to get through this, through any of this, is together!"

Carol was panting amidst the screaming and brawling, too scared to ask the one question demanding an answer _–Where is Caesar?- _when the door of the RV behind her flung open and Brian padded down the first step.

"We have a leader, a really good one." His voice was stone cold and derisive, as if he was disgusted by the argument unraveling between them. "Look at you," he bit out at Tony who was now coughing out his lungs. "You're sick, you could be dead in the next twelve hours and all you can think about is taking over leadership." Everyone fell silent for a moment, gazes darting to each other suspiciously, waiting for someone else to offer some ground first. "I say we hold off and see how things go. If my daughter dies, I don't give a crap which one of you is leader tomorrow."

Brian moved to get back inside but Carol lurched his way and grabbed his arm. "Where's Lilly?" she asked, trembling like a leaf in the gale.

"Inside, with Meghan."

"And Caesar?" she went on in the same frantic tone. "Where is he?"

"We ain't answerin' to you, bitch," Mitch brayed again.

"Jesus!" Pete snapped. "For once in your life just shut the fuck up, Mitch!"

She wasn't paying attention to the brother versus brother clash behind her, hanging off of Brian's every word.

His only eye narrowed just a hint, inspecting her as thoroughly and assiduously as ever. "He's sick," he broke the news flatly. "Very sick."

* * *

**So, what do you think is happening here? Are Bob and Sasha the real deal or simply try to misguide Rick? Do you love Hershel as much as I do? Is Brian truly a changed man? What part will Erin play in the story? And will Martinez die? Oh, boy, if you have no idea then I'm really pleased :)**

**I know this story has been a slow burn and it's taking forever for things to pan out, but this only happens because the Caryl, the rat feeder and the 'Brian' storylines will converge at the same time. Three different storylines and a bunch of characters are being carried out in parallel and every single person and every single event has a part to play as we proceed. I wanted all the characters to have reasonings and motives to guide them –whether we agree with them or not is a secondary issue. What matters here is for them to be true to who they are and steer the plot instead of making random, unbelievable choices just to serve my own intentions.**

**Just hang in there, ok? I promise you all that from chapter 9 and on there will be non-stop Caryl action :) Thank you for being patient and keep in mind that every line and detail that right now make no sense will finally come into play when things round up. **


	8. Zugzwang

**Hey everyone! Apologies for not replying to the reviews of the previous chapter, real life is beating me down right now. Just want you to know that I appreciate every one of them and thank you all for taking some time to drop a word :)**

**About this chapter, I consider it crucial for what's coming up next and by the end of it, I hope you know why and share my piece of mind. It's full of Caryl feels!**

* * *

"_Chess is all about getting the king into check, you see. It's about killing the father. I would say that chess has more to do with the art of murder than it does with the art of war."  
― __Arturo Pérez-Reverte__, __The Flanders Panel_

"We're soldiers of the US army!" Pete's furious cries, muzzled by his effort to contain the altercation within the trailer, wafted outside. "Sworn to protect the weak, not slaughter them!"

"You've talked war, boy, but I've fought it," Mitch bit out. "When in the true battlefield, you learn that the weak exist only to die."

Carol waddled past the RV as fast as her feet could drag her. The laundry basket perched on her hip slowed her gait significantly and she clenched her jaw. She didn't want to hear how Mitch vented his near to death experience once he was cleared from danger. How he liked to spend his time during the runs and how little he valued human life were both well-known facts. She knew that the brawl between him and Pete was triggered by whatever happened during their supply run and any details would only fuel her already harrowing nightmares. With the illness rampaging the camp for four days in a row, they were running low in almost everything, food above all and as soon as Mitch was back on his feet, all braying and kicking, the two brothers had hit the road in search of supplies. The injustice of someone like him brushing off a fatal illness like sniffles while innocents dropped around him like flies belted through her. How the cockroaches were immune or too vigorous to die from the virus –she, Brian, Mitch- and good people simply weren't.

"No!" Pete hissed back. "Just no! It's immoral and unethical. It's against anything you took an oath to stand up for. Killing unarmed people to loot their food? There's nothing honorable about it."

"Honorable? Honorable?" Mitch was guffawing hard, amused by what he evidently considered naiveté or downright stupidity on his brother's behalf. "Hate to burst your bubble, princess, but have you taken a glimpse around you lately? What's honor compared to surviving another day?"

"You raped that woman and then cut her up like she was a piece of meat," Pete snarled.

Carol opened up her gait, wincing at the mental pictures flashing across her mind. Glutted with sanitizing surfaces tainted with blood and vomit, devastated by the sight of bodies lowering to the freshly dug graves, horrified with having Caesar quaking in her arms, coughing and choking in his own blood and just too overwhelmed with everything, she couldn't for the life of her listen to Mitch for another second without attacking him or start screaming like the local mad woman.

Today was the day her main problem was to sneak out of the camp in the night. She wanted to see Daryl, look at him, healthy, safe and sound, spill the beans and garner her well-deserved rejection. The rest, Brian, Mitch, hell, all of them, every single problem on the ever-growing pile could wait, postponed for later.

"'xcuse me, wasn't she? What's honor compared to woman's pussy you lil' piece of fag?" At the lack of any response from Pete, Mitch went on. "Don't sweat it, boy. You tried to stop it, sleep well at night. You just can't fight off a real man."

Finally reaching the clothesline, Carol dropped the laundry basket and squinted at Brian and Meghan.

"Run complications?" he asked, nodding at Pete's trailer.

"I don't know," Carol replied and started sorting out her laundry.

Brian wrung the water from the soaking wet tee shirt, smirking playfully. "Your move, pumpkin."

"I'm thinking," Meghan murmured in concentration, carefully examining the pawns spread on the chessboard.

"You can't think forever," he prodded and latched a clothes peg onto the shirt. "Sooner or later you've gotta make a move."

Pouting, Meghan fumbled with the wooden surface before her. "You never let me win anyway."

"Well, that wouldn't be winning," Brian droned, gazing up at the girl with an idle smile plastered across his face as water dribbled from another black cloth. "That's what my daddy used to say. He used to beat me at chess, too. Heck, he used to beat me at everything."

"Was your dad mean?"

"Sometimes."

"Were you bad?"

"Sometimes."

Meghan fell silent, face cloudy and eyes glistening with an onslaught of worries and questions to be answered. Brian's single eye narrowed and he dropped the azure jersey back in the basin where the rest of the laundry was drenching, wiping the water off on his pants. "What is it, pumpkin?"

"Am I bad?"

"What?" Brian huffed out, crouching in front of her, genuinely taken aback by the question. "Hey, why would you think that?"

Meghan shot him a heartbreaking look. "My dad was always mean to me," she mumbled.

"Hey, you're good. You are," Brian drawled tenderly. "You, me, your mom and Aunt Tara, we're gonna be ok."

Swallowing hard, Carol kept busy with her laundry, barely able to tame down her overflowing emotion. The way that man, _that_ man, was with this little girl was taking the better of her. It stomped her stupid and disarmed her hand. He had nearly lost his mind while Meghan was sick; he never left her side and supported Lilly and Tara like an angel from heaven. That's exactly how Lilly regarded him, like an angel or even more, like a God, and Carol could inwardly object as much as she fancied –Lilly had her personal experience to invoke and, to that, Carol had nothing to say. Nothing Caesar would allow her.

"'Cause we're good?" Meghan inquired hopefully.

Carol's head twirled around, her intense gaze piercing through the man to gauge his reaction. Brian averted his eye away from the girl's face and nodded quickly his reassurance.

"All of us?" Meghan asked again, oblivious to the impossible questions she was raising.

The girl was treading recklessly, but the beast was hibernating. Light-headed and ready to puke, Carol watched Brian's hazel eye flicking momentarily on Meghan and then slanting back on the ground, grim and hapless, his facial muscles twitching, mouth opening without providing an answer.

"Carol's gonna be ok, too. She helped mom save us. She's good like the rest of us. Right, Carol?"

Meghan was now glancing up at her expectantly and tart bile bubbled up Carol's throat. Answering 'yes' to that would be more than inaccuracy, lack of conformity to the truth or justice. If _Brian_ couldn't declare his inherent kindness out loud, it only felt just and righteous that she refrained from such a blatant falsehood as well. Defending herself, staking out a claim for redemption was in the nadir of her priority list. She would have to survive without the declaration of pretentious benevolence Megan was so eager to squeeze out. She had survived Rick's brazen denouncement, she had survived her own condemnation. Tonight she'd have to face the anathema of the only person that mattered to her for sins of the past as well as new ones. So she simply advanced her tight-lipped smile at the clean face limning innocence and chastity, cocking her head equivocally.

Returning back to hanging his laundry, Carol watched from the corner of her eye Brian's Adam's apple bobbing up and down. "Yeah," he eventually muttered on her behalf, locking gazes with her. "Carol's good, too."

Meghan beamed to him, the man she worshipped and idolized heart and soul and then grinned at Carol.

"Your turn," the girl said, having made her chess move. "Brian? It's your turn."

"I'm thinking."

Saved by the Erin's voice calling her from the entrance of Caesar's trailer, Carol dropped everything and trotted her way there.

"He's awake," the woman informed as Carol pushed past her with a worrisome nod.

Stalking over to the bed, she leaned over a pair of droopy, kind of foggy and very disoriented eyes lingering on her.

"Hey there," she hummed, cracking an ear to ear smile. "Welcome back."

"Had no idea the flu felt like a plane crash," Caesar grouched, the low bass of his drawl coming out throaty and gruff after days of sluggishness.

"That'd be the biggest 'I told you so' ever if I was one to say 'I told you so'," Carol laughed.

"Gimme a cigarette, you smartass," he grumbled, groping the nightstand for the familiar touch of plastic wrap.

"Now you think you're being funny," she yakked out the mockery of mirth and shoved the pack out of his reach.

"Fuck, I feel like I was run over by a truck. Then it reversed and run me over again and then geared up and… You get the gist." He gave her an inconspicuous look, one that couldn't be placed in the specter of friendship and companionship, one that barely disguised a pinch of something more. "That's twice you've saved my sorry ass."

"You scared us," she confided simply with a light shrug.

Caesar grew serious and pensive and Carol sighed, staring at her lap and waiting the inevitable follow-up questions. His fresh awakening to the world found the symmetry and dynamics, the plain reality of the camp truthfully, forever altered. The axis had tilted and no one could claim with more confidence than an educated guess at best the exact point the spiral would stop and the balance would be restored. The toll was high and Caesar's hesitant trepidation to find out how high it was in perfect accordance with her reluctance to provide the answers.

"How many?" he asked eventually, propping up on his elbows.

Carol regarded him warily, forehead wrinkled in grave concern. "Eleven."

His jaw clenched but he said nothing and Carol gathered her courage.

"Mark's father."

Caesar inhaled sharply, holding the air.

"Emma."

Nodding, he chewed on his upper lip.

"Mr and Mrs Evans."

At that, he closed his eyes. "They were together their entire lives. Did you know that?"

Carol shook her head, mouthing a barely audible 'no'.

"Yeah… High school sweethearts. They had their golden anniversary a few months back. Reckon it only made sense for them to be buried together."

"Alisha," Carol whispered. "I tr-I tried with her, but by the time I came back she had reached a point of no return. We could do nothing, really. Just watch her slip away."

"Go on," he said huskily.

"Tony."

"Tony?" he parroted as if the impossible was presented to him like a take-it-at-face-value innocuous fact. Tony was a man twice Caesar's size, taller and bulkier even than Brian. Going down by what was vaguely referenced as 'the flu' was next to inconceivable.

"Yeah…" She didn't know how to paint the details of it. That when they dragged Tony's lifeless body to the grave, it had been Carol who handed Erin a pickaxe to make sure her husband stayed dead and wasn't coming back to hurt her in any form –wasting bullets was a luxury they couldn't afford. That Erin had taken it, unsurely yet determinedly, and plunged it in his head three times in a row, zoned out of the world around her. That she was thinking of Daryl the entire time she watched her own life stuck in the replay with different protagonists, that she was thinking of Daryl every second in the last three days, of the four months before. That after the so-called funeral, she was the last one to approach Erin and offer her condolences and that the response she received while the widow's red-rimmed albeit cold eyes were fixed on her_–'Oh, please, not you too. You know better than that. This was a gift from God.'_- made her blood curdle.

"Go on."

"And the Robertsons."

"What do you mean the Robertsons?" he gasped, eyes wide and filled with horror. "All of them?"

"Sammy passed first. It beat him down, lasted less than twelve hours. Then the twins and Steve…" Casting a sidelong glance his way, Carol registered the emotion pooling in his eyes as he quickly wiped every trace of it with the back of his hand and gazed back at her lap. Men like him never wanted to be caught in a sentimental moment of weakness –a knowledge she had acquired next to the hunter Caesar occasionally reminded her of. "When Steve started bleeding from the eyes, Kelly shot him and blew her brains out. Nobody got there in time to stop her. Erin and I, we were sitting right here, you were having a seizure when we heard-" Her voice trailed off and a sob zapped through her chest.

"Jesus…" Caesar hissed and this time she could see beyond doubt how much he craved the cigarette she denied him. His hand curled around her wrist. "How are you holding up?"

"Like I'm having the same nightmare twice," she whimpered, angry at herself for not containing the grief oozing off her. "I knew how it was gonna end but couldn't wake up or do a damn thing about it."

"Carol-"

"Good news is I didn't kill anyone this time, though," she added hastily as if it was something to be questioned, wiping the tears rolling down her face.

Brow furrowed, he chided gently. "Did I ask, _Olivia_?"

"No, _Elliot_. No, you didn't," Carol huffed, looking up at him through eyes growing all kinds of misty again. She felt never ending gratitude for the way he trusted her so amply. She neither deserved it nor would ever be able to repay this debt. "Thank you."

"All this death," Caesar chewed out indignantly, "all this death and the only shit that matters at the end of the day is that the camp is two soldiers shorter."

Pressing her eyes shut, Carol willed her equanimity to embolden. He was right. He was right but to no avail. That was the savage truth they lived by.

"How are things around here?"

"Better now," she heaved. "Those who've pulled through until now are recovering. We're short of some stuff, but we manage. Mitch was up and kicking yesterday. He went on a run with Pete, we'll be fine for a few days. You should get some rest, don't worry about stuff like that. We have everything covered."

"We?"

"Pete, Alex, me and… Brian," Carol explained. "When I came back Tony was claiming leadership for himself."

"Asshole was dying and all he wanted was to become leader?" Caesar grunted, half-bitterly half-derisively.

"That's _exactly_ what Brian said," Carol snorted sadly and shrugged her confusion when she received a quizzical look. "He stood up for you. I don't know what to tell you, Caesar. You know how I feel about him. But you brought him to have someone to root for you in case things went south. He did."

"Do you believe him?"

"No," she bit out. "But it was Brian and Pete against Tony and Mark. Scott didn't pick sides. Mitch was all braying about from his cot but couldn't do much. Alex and Steve backed Pete and Brian and that's pretty much the reason you're still the leader."

"And you're pretty much the reason I'm a live leader," Caesar droned softly.

The atmosphere inside the trailer altered instantaneously, from grieving and conversational to gruelingly loaded. Squirming nervously, Carol felt the air tether inside her chest and patted the palm wrapped around her wrist in the hopes that it'd be all that was required for the topic to die in its birth. "It got you laid up for good," she said, forcing a tight-lipped smile, and moved to get up. "But you'll be as good as new before you know it."

"Carol," Caesar rasped, his clinch steeling to pin her on the spot. "Stay here a bit."

Conforming despite her will and better judgment, she remained seated, eyes flickering around uncoordinated and cheeks ablaze as if scalding water was splashed on her face. Feelings were her off limit topic, precariously trespassing the line of an already wobbling composure. To her, feelings meant Daryl whereas at the moment feelings were radiating off every pore of Caesar's stance and beady eyes. Wrong person.

"You know what I feared the most till not that long ago?" He was regarding her intensely, as if he could see right through the casual mask and straight to her inner turmoil. "I told you about my family."

"Wife and daughters," Carol cited sympathetically. "You lost them during the outbreak."

"I couldn't start over another family with another woman after that. Couldn't risk it," he confided, eyeing her meaningfully. "Sleep in the night knowing that sooner or later I'd lose them again." His hand slid lower, now clasping her fingers. "I'm thinking now that maybe I was a fool, you know?"

She knew. And she also knew what was coming next. She just did. She should be happy, glad or at least a wee bit smug. Having spent her entire life grudgingly or compulsively victimizing and reducing herself to a meek, abused housewife, the notion of being identified as a used, drained, old hag, unattractive and undesirable to the other sex, was instilled on her brain and she should be delighted with this turn-over. She should at least savor the self-satisfaction and assertion of a man young and strong and charming in that old-fashioned kind of way, the acknowledgement of her femininity. She should. She didn't. She was just feeling miserable and more stupid than ever.

She felt she deserved all the shit she took in her life, because she was, and always had been, too stupid to make just one smart choice. Too much a fool to peer over Ed's facade, too stupid and weak to muster the courage to abandon him after the first punch, too stupid to pack and flee even when Sophia was born. She had been so stupid and delusional she had contrived all sorts of otherworldly, unreasonable excuses and scenarios to convince herself that she was happy –the frequent hospitalizations aside. Later on, she had only grown more and more stupid. Stupid enough to fall for a man completely out of reach, stupid to kill two innocent people and then ran away like the coward she was just because someone ordered her to. Stupid enough not to just sit down and wait for Daryl to come, for Daryl who always came. And now she was stupid enough to tell him the truth about who she was and what she was up to. Now she was sagging there, across from a man that was every woman's wish, fiddling with gentle ways to reject him, too stupid for fresh starts and the clean slate bequeathed to her.

Caesar was the one in a million opportunity, but Daryl was her unique spot in the universe. Caesar lay before her and she was listening to his every word reverently, but if it was Daryl in his shoes, she wouldn't be able to hear a damn thing over the uproar of the frantic pulse thudding in her ears. In a lifetime dedicated to the pursuit of a man of honor, Caesar could have been the purchase that grappling hook finally found, had Daryl not clawed his presence into every cell of her existence. Caesar would be the smart choice, but Daryl was the only one.

She couldn't breathe, her airway clogged up and the oxygen just failed to worm through her lungs.

"They ain't wrong, you know," he murmured. "There are tunnels, lights, dead people talking to you…"

"Caesar-" Carol gasped huskily to cut him off, only for her fumbling slur to knot up into a tongue-tied stuttering.

"I don't wanna be immune to second chances, Carol," he urged, lacing his fingers with hers as chock-fulls of words spurted out laden and sloshed. "We _do_ deserve a second chance. _You_ do. You're blind if you can't see it! Why not live when-when we're alive?"

"I can't give you children," she announced solemnly, clinging to the fleeting hope that this statement would suffice to bring the conversation to a premature stop.

"Can't or-"

"Can't. I got my tubes tied up a long time ago."

Narrowing his eyes, Caesar inspected her so meticulously that Carol quailed, her lashed soul stripped, nude in front of him. "But you can't give me yourself either, can you? You got yourself tied up a long time ago as well."

Too distressed to argue, she pulled the first trick up her sleeve and did what she knew best. She joked, diminishing the heart-wrenching situation to a frivolous caper. Cocking a brow, plastering a frolicsome smirk, casting a mischievous look, advancing a taunting tone, she put on the crawling-out-of-every-emotional-jam sassy façade. "I'm much, much older than you."

Slumping back on his pillows, he sighed. "How old are you anyway?"

"Forty-three. At least according to my calculations, but I wouldn't be shocked to find out I've missed a decade or so. We aren't exactly keeping track, are we?" Carol babbled breathlessly, desperate to veer off a conversation galling her to no end. Now she wanted a cigarette too.

"And I'm thirty-five," he retorted soberly, not biting the teasing banter. "You make it sound like you were alive when the Statue of Liberty was built."

"Enough of an age gap for people to start calling me cougar behind my back," she tried again.

"They already do," Caesar scoffed, his stormy gaze fixed on her, assessing even the tiniest modulation in her flattened countenance. "Most of them think we're already together. Why not confirm the rumors, Carol? Let's start over together. Why the hell not?"

_Daryl_. It was so simple, really. One word, summing up everything.

The attire of her mislaid zippy mask was chucked away now. She was a different woman, as different from Ed's wife as day and night. And yet, change worked both ways; it could be upwards as well as downwards, thriving as well as wilting. She had evolved positively in so many ways, disastrously in so many others. But during that bumpy, long journey ever since Hershel's farm, there had always been a safe constant, a guiding light through hell, a feeling so sweet and unsullied that still melted her heart. A man she worshipped and wasn't the man in front of her despite the jarring similarities.

Her mind was raving until a light tilt beneath her chin brought her back to reality.

"Why do you wanna know?" Carol soughed under the suffocating encumbrance of an anvil trampling her chest, every speck of the feigned, light-hearted mood replenished with skittish aloofness. "Say I tell you every teeny tiny detail. What difference will it make?"

"I want to know what you fear," Caesar drawled pointedly. She didn't respond and he pushed more. "Is he alive?"

Carol gave him an assertive nod, lips pursed in a thin line, as she focused on the fingers snared between his to avoid the caramel-tinted gaze rampaging her features.

"Prison group?"

Another nod, this time accompanied with a ragged inhalation.

"And what do you fear? That you'll betray him if you start over with another guy?"

She opened her mouth to explain, but nothing came out other than a hacking sound. Carol stilled and paled, wrestling with scurrying utterances, sentiments impossible to be verbalized and clarifications beyond any elaborate description. Once again, as always was the case, words slithered away when it came down to Daryl. Coughing to rid the lump painfully bloating in her throat, she wheezed a labored breath and freed her hand from Caesar's grip, slowing standing up. Αs the apprehension-inundated air only became thicker and thicker every second she remained silent, Carol stumbled unsteadily towards the window, shunting the drapes away.

"I fear that I won't die today or tomorrow or the day after or even next year. I fear that I will live a long, long, endless and miserable life and die really old in my bed," she hummed gloomily, gazing at Brian and Meghan playing chess, her voice rippling with emotion. "I fear that I really will be stupid enough to kid myself and believe that I can start over with a nice guy like you, adopt children, forge a family and a life, spend decades with them all, care about them, love them. Truly, deeply love them. Convince myself that here I am, I've moved on, I've put the past behind me." Her voice cracked, contorted into a stifled sob as the abstruse sketch of a well-molded vision chalked out, thinly-veiled behind a not so erudite confession. "And then, right there in my deathbed, when I'm lying in my husband's arms, taking my last breath, I'll whisper a name and it won't be the name of the man holding me. It will be that other name. And I will have just a split second before dying, like literally, _literally_ a split second, just long enough to realize that everything I lived was a lie, because everything I ever was it was for him and he was always, always in my heart. That I fooled myself and everyone around me and for once again, there will be no undoing the past, no righting the wrongs. And I fear, no, I'm terrified of how true and final this is."

She spun around to face him and the morbid twinkle brimming in her pupils ignited a churn deep in Caesar's gut. Lungfuls of air withered out in pants and there was just pain, bone-deep pain squirting from her in grooves. "Find someone else to start over with, Caesar. I can't start over because it's never been over for me." No endings, no beginnings –fundamental law of nature. "That man… He's just… it for me."

He didn't hatch a single word as the door flung open and Carol stormed outside, heading straight to finish her half-hung up laundry like her life depended on that. She perked her ears to the chess discussion between Brian and Meghan, despondent to just gag the howls echoing deafeningly in her head.

The game there was apparently almost over, most pawns captured from both sides as Meghan gawked at Brian like he had popped a third eye. "Zug- what?"

"Zugzwang," he reiterated slowly, still chuckling at the girl's befuddlement. His finger darted above the decimated black and white armies strewn across the chessboard. "That's what happened here. It's a German word and it means 'obligation to move'. It describes your place in the game right now. You have to make a move but no matter what you do, it will bring you a worse result than if it was my turn to play. That's why you mustn't just think how to attack your opponent's pawns, but also remember never to give up defense of your own." The girl was scratching her head blankly and Brian smirked at her. "You don't understand a word of what I'm saying, do you?"

"I'm eleven," Meghan giggled. "Speak English!"

"Go on, make your move. You'll see it yourself," Brian coaxed as Meghan glided her bishop three squares back, squinting at him suspiciously. He also made his move. "Now, what's happening here?"

The girl saw it. It was two moves back, but another checkmate was creeping her way.

"Zugzwang describes the point at a game when one player realizes that he will be inevitably checkmated," Brian said softly.

"Oh…" Meghan sulked. "I lose then."

"You lose."

"Bummer."

"Next time, protect your team first. It matters more than killing the opponent."

"But you can't win if you don't kill the other king!" she mewled angrily, puckering her lips and did her last move, one that couldn't save her white king no matter what.

"That's why you need the strategy and the insight," Brian clarified again. "You need to think three moves ahead of your opponent, mislead him, throw dust in his eyes, force your own rules. Sometimes you will make moves that look stupid from the outside and he will think the victory is close. Let him. He will think that he owns the game and right then he will see the zugzwang, much before you say…" His knight moved down the chess board and Meghan's king was flanked no matter what she did. "Checkmate."

Carol's skin crawled at the double meaning of his speech, the easily projecting out of the chess context and straight into real life subtext… It could really be a game strategy. It could be more, a calculated life practice. Her bet was on second.

Mulling over the chess term, a sounding board in the shipwreck of her frazzled mindset, Carol felt she was suffocating. She didn't know chess, but perfectly grasped the cackling sarcasm of yet another ill-humored cosmic prank. Somehow, she was sure beyond doubt that she was experiencing the emotional equivalent of that ridiculous chess term. Zugzwang. No matter what she opted for, she hurt those she cared for the most. Being loyal to Caesar and honoring her sense of morality, meant hurting Daryl. Being in love with Daryl, meant choosing him over Caesar time and time again, over herself whatever the price was. She had broken Caesar's heart without blinking moments ago, she was about to do the same with Daryl, breaking out the news of how she teamed up with his worst enemies in the world. In the bitter end, no matter what she did, they'd all lose.

Her road was one-way and linear, steering inexorably to disaster. Like zugzwang. And in spite of everything, she couldn't wait for the sun to come down and the night to claw in. Tonight, she was meeting Daryl again –the rest were philosophical quandaries.

xxxxx

She spied on him from the shadows as he stalked down the catwalk, sneaking out under everyone's nose with the skill and elegance of a panther, unnoticed like a needle in the hay.

"Take Lizzie with you."

It was a rare treat, blindsiding Daryl to the point of jumping out of his skin, so rare that Michonne neither blinked nor managed to mask the flash of an ill-concealed triumph sparkling in her big eyes. The pointy tip of an arrow was trained on her forehead, Daryl's knitted brows jutting into an epic scowl as she sauntered towards him, taking all the time in the world.

"Do this again, make sure you're bolt-proof," he snapped, lowering his crossbow.

"Take Lizzie with you," Michonne repeated.

Gnawing on his already mangled thumbnail, Daryl prickled in his close-lipped brew of reticence and ferment, eyeing her menacingly through a slit.

"I'm no fool. You should've known this much about me by now, tough guy," she stated matter-of-factly, holding his hard look with unswerving defiance.

For two days in a row, she had watched him and watched him hawk-like sitting on burning coals, waiting for something. She had seen the lantern in his cell burning until the crack of dawn, never snuffing out. The fact that he didn't throw her a bone no matter how much she poked, that he simply wouldn't honor her with his trust this time, made it explicit to her that whatever secret he was guarding it was Carol-related. Since they randomly bumped into her in that cabin, his behavior didn't resonate at all with his normally explosive demeanor. He had let her walk away without razing Georgia from the face of earth and Michonne wouldn't buy this shit, not after everything he had muddled through to locate her in the first place. His surreptitious peeks at the clock during dinner, not even remotely as casual and nonchalant as he meant for them to be, pretty much spoiled the details. It was a countdown. He had only let her walk away, because there was another meeting already set up.

"I won't ask a damn thing or breathe a word to anyone, don't worry," Michonne went on. "But take Lizzie with you. Carol's all closed off right now. Hope you know it's a defense mechanism, right?" Riled up with the ongoing silence, she furrowed her brows. "Right?"

After a few indecisive seconds swaddled on pondering his choices, Daryl finally gave her a curt nod.

"And your temper isn't likely to help with that. A kid will get through her easier; she won't be able to resist her. Plus Lizzie is old enough to keep a secret." Reaching to her backpocket, she fished out a metallic flask, juddering it close to his face to showcase that it was full of booze.

"This ain't a high school reunion," Daryl grunted, ashamed and exposed beyond comprehension, but snagged it anyway. "Ain't that clear to you?"

"Crystal," Michonne deadpanned, wrestling against the smirk flickering across her lips, her poker face perfect. "But if you're smart, you won't fight me on this one. Take it with you and make sure you both use it. You're ready to blow this and I'm not spending the rest of my life searching for her out there."

Daryl fidgeted, his weight nervously shifted from one foot to another. "Anythin' else?"

"Say her name, without 'fuck you's before or after it this time," Michonne admonished, gently and sternly in equal doses. She felt like schooling a kid that couldn't keep up with the rest of the classroom as he regarded her doe-eyed, making mental notes of her fast-tracked tip-off. Maybe it wasn't the time to inform him that she wanted to bust in the cabin the other day and give him a piece of her mind for screaming Carol's name only to prod her for some sexual action. Maybe it wasn't the time to stress how _not_ satisfied he'd be if she took up his advice with another guy either. "We're chicks, even the smartest among us," she snickered, rolling her eyes. "Little things like that have a way to bend our resistance."

"You ain't finished, are you?" Now he was growling but kept his gaze on a particularly interesting spot on the cindered wall behind.

"Hurt her." His head whipped up at the blunt harshness jetting from her tone, but Michonne didn't faze. "Find her weak spot and break her. She's a mother that lost her child. Doesn't take a genius to figure what her weak spot is. Hit her where she hurts the most and break her. Trust me, she needs it."

A crusty shred of skin was chopped off his cuticle, the corner of his eyes crinkled and a groan wriggled out painfully convulsed –the first telltales of a panic attack tickling with frayed nerves gradually replenished his features. To be talkative and easy-going, get her drunk, exhibiting an out-of-his-way affection by calling her 'Carol', deliberately hurting her with the Sophia weapon –he had no idea how to do any of these things, let alone all of them combined, without dying from embarrassment first. He looked hands down mortified.

"Or you could do something much simpler, really," she purred with a wicked smile and an innocent shrug, ostensibly oblivious to the inner tempest her last phrase ignited.

"What?" A ray of hope tainted the slur of his snarl like a castaway spotting a ship in the horizon. It hurt the emotional roller-coaster he was experiencing, but he followed the crumbs nevertheless.

Leaning closer, Michonne shot him a mischievous look. "Be. Your. Brother," she drawled pointedly. "Be Merle. Sweep her off her feet and blow her away instead of just blowing it."

Daryl glared at her. "It ain't-"

"… like that. Yeah, yeah, so I've heard a thousand times by now," Michonne breathed out and tossed her arms in the air, her escalating exasperation thinly-veiled. Sure Daryl never failed to surpass every level of immaturity expected from him, and this kind of childish, hapless belligerence would have been hilarious, had it not been pitifully grievous for a redneck badass his age. The guy was just too cute. "Too bad, you know, 'cause _if_ it was, it'd really save you from a lot of trouble."

"How?"

"You could skip all the other parts, which by the way require lots of diplomacy and patience and cut straight to the chase, which is much more your kinda thing. And by the time she got a hold of the situation, it'd be too late for her to win the game. There's a chess term for that I'm missing right now." Her face grew brooding, brain riffling through her knowledge stock. "Something sounding like Japanese, but actually being German… Whatever."

Redder than a rooster's comb, Daryl was raring to flee like a bat out of hell but willed himself rooted in the place. "You know, for someone with your reputation, you sure talk a lot," he grumbled to sidestep the topic and she knew by an unfathomable flame in his gaze that this was his version of a clumsy compliment.

"You're just one of the lucky ones to get the VIP treatment," Michonne grinned and gave him a light slap on the forearm. "It's easy, really. When everything zeroes in fight or fly and jelly knees, remember that you spent four months looking for her."

Sucking a lungful of air, Daryl exhaled laboriously. "Go fetch Lizzie. We gotta get goin'."

"_You_ go fetch her," Michonne countered, frowning at the suggestion.

"And set off every goddamn alarm in this place?" he bristled. "How do you think that girl would react if _I_," Daryl paused for a moment, jamming his forefinger onto his chest to illustrate the paranoia of the venture, "_I_ of all people was to wake her up in the middle of the night and tell her to tow behind me for a walk in the woods?"

"I'm not sure she finds me any less terrifying," she griped, wrinkling her nose contemplatively.

"Look at you," Daryl jibed and crossed his arms, cocking an eyebrow. "The samurai afraid of a lil' girl."

"Damn you and your damn romance you won't even admit to me, Dixon," she finally hissed, thoroughly displeased by the outcome of the argument. But despite her hot temper, she was already swirling on her heels. "If that girl pisses her pants, you're doing the mopping."

* * *

**Carol turning down Caesar had to be done before she met Daryl in this story. I wouldn't want any clouds about who she loves floating around there and I hope you liked the way it was done. And, hopefully, you enjoy the Daryl/Michonne bromance as much as I do :)**

**Thank you all for reading. Please let me know what you think :) Now that we've come this far, I can promise some major Caryl action in the following three chapters. Three chapters of Caryl to make up for all the waiting! And by major… I mean major *wink wink***

**P.S. Keep zugzwang in mind... We'll find it again along the way!  
**


	9. Breaking Through

**Hey everyone! So, I was diagnosed with fatigue and I have to stay in bed, rest and take my vitamins until the fever breaks –doctor's orders! Let's see how that will affect my writing :) Once again, I haven't caught up with your reviews and once again I want to apologize and tell you all how much I appreciate each one of them. This chapter is unbetaed so bare with me. A huge hug to Vicki for copying with my nagging :)**

**Keep in mind that we are following three parallel stories that are now ready to converge. First of all is Caryl, of course, but we also have the prison crew with the rat feeder and the camp with Brian/Governor and his own plans. To help refresh your memory, I have summed up the camp population we're familiar with in the end of the chapter.**

* * *

_It's funny. Your worst nightmare always seems so far away. Then, all of a sudden, there it is, like a monstrous tidal wave. You try to escape, but you can't. You struggle and you struggle and you struggle, your desperate cries unheard. Then, something strange happens, you stop struggling. Your cries take flight. You forget you're drowning._

― _Dark Harbor_

Hot, almost sizzling with the remnants of a moribund vitality sputtering out, the sanguinary jet squirted out of the sliced throat and drenched his hands. He shuddered some, but didn't budge, gritting his teeth. Two more steps and the carcass was dumped inches away from the inner side of the hemmed prison yard. Stalking back, he watched the few walkers snarl instantly, barging against the fences for a chomp of the delicacy lain just a tad out of reach of the gory claws lumbering between the triangular holes. The sneer morphing his face into an ominous clown mien faltered to dejectedness, slit eyes dropping back to the squeaking rats towed from his string.

The game was gearing up. No more half-assed moves. They were stupid enough to call his rat slaughtering experimentation. Rats dissected or nailed on boards. Experimentation of what exactly? A spate so sudden and muzzled, a true outpour of violence was no experimentation. It was a core-quaking outburst, desperate to be tamed and honed into an alternative target. But his efforts were to no avail. He hated them all. For one of them, just one, it was personal. As personal as it could get. That person had hurt him, had taken everything from him, had left him bereft, a grieving shell of his old self, yet walked around like nothing had happened, oblivious of the culpability and the looming penance. May God be his witness, he had tried. He had tried so hard to let everything go, water under the bridge. When Carol got banished for Karen and David's murders, he saw a ray of hope, a chance to get away with his incubating vengeance, materialized into dead rats and fence sabotage. He snatched it briefly as Carol was dubbed the rat feeder on an accelerated basis and hatched ways to be implemented inside a community again.

Pipedreams.

The more he wrestled against it the more hatred fed on his soul. It gnawed the vestiges of goodness and left a holocaust in its wake, poisoning his veins with cancerous instincts and choleric toxins. He wouldn't last long like that without some action. The dilemma was between him and the others. And there was no dilemma at all at the end of the day. He chose himself, he always did. No more holding back, no more artificial distractions to back off of his mission. That was what he was after all, an entire human being summed up in five words: a man on a mission. Demons thrived and waltzed all around him, inside and out. But to him, the devil himself was sleeping in the building behind. They were looking for a psychopath, they wouldn't find one. There was no sociopath behind that deliberate damage, just him. Vindictive and ruthless.

His knife squelched another carotid messily and this time the carrion slumped without twitching, without those agonizing seconds before expiring. He dropped it a few feet afar from the first one down the fence line and sneaked a glimpse on his watch. Next perimeter patrol would be up in five minutes; he knew because he had set up the schedule himself. Walkers were already propagating behind the fences, herding up, thickening their former scarce numbers. No way in hell would they be able to spot the dead rats before he had accomplished to gather a few dozens of walkers there, not in the blackness of the backyard away from the guard towers and the spotlights.

With one last glance around him, he knifed, chucked the last three rats and disappeared into the shadows.

xxxxx

Caesar rutted his brow. "A redneck with a crossbow and a black woman with a sword, huh?"

Placing an ashtray on the nightstand, Pete shot him a quizzical look. "You know them?"

"Brian and I crossed paths with them a long time ago."

"So you knew Carol before she came here too?" Pete asked, tipping his cigarette.

"No," Caesar said curtly. "We had only met some members of her group. I didn't know who she was when you brought her here. Later on, when I found out, it didn't matter. And Brian still doesn't know who she is." Or so he hoped. Grabbing Pete's pack, he slid out a cigarette for himself and motioned for the lighter, focusing on his feeble strength to lift up against the bed frame.

"I don't know, man," Pete protested. "You think it's a good idea?"

"I'm short of better ones right now," Caesar bit out and flicked the lighter, taking a long drag. "Tell me the rest."

"First she talked with the woman. She had skinned her shoulder somewhere and Carol patched her up. Then the guy went back in and the woman came out."

"And?"

"And… Madhouse!" Pete emphasized, eyebrows almost tangent to his dark hairline. "At first it was quiet and then that guy started screaming. Something about a prison being their home, that he was looking for her for months and thought she was dead. He must've broken something, the table or a chair, I don't know, but I heard the bustle."

"He hit her?" Caesar seethed.

"No! No," Pete reassured in haste. "Then it was quiet again and when she came out she was fine. She had been crying and all but he didn't lay a finger on her. The whole thing with the three of them didn't last more than twenty minutes. Thirty tops."

Lodging the cigarette between his lips, Caesar rubbed his washed out eyes with the heels off his hands, inhaling another lungful of smoke. Inside a disease-rampaged head, the mills of his brain jumped into overdrive, frantically connecting dots and piecing Pete's info and Carol's nameless, half-confessions. Even before her meltdown about the man holding her heart in his pocket that afternoon, there had always been something dreamy about the way she spoke for Daryl Dixon. And if he had spent this entire time looking for her… Not much of a subtext there.

Pete inspected his pensive expression cautiously, mulling over his next line. "Look, Caesar," he said solemnly, wagging a finger in the space between them. "This here? This is me picking sides, ok? I didn't go to my brother or fan the flames in any way for three days in a row. I held off until you were out of the woods and came straight to you. And now I'm expecting you to do the same and come clean with me. How dangerous are these people and what does it mean for the camp that they bumped into Carol again?"

Running his palm over the short fur of his scalp, Caesar puffed out. "They can be dangerous if they want, but they ain't murderers. Brian and me, it was us that hurt their group, not the other way around." He paused then, waiting for the inevitable questions, but Pete stared back closemouthed. "Between Dixon and Michonne, the people you saw, and us? Bucket loads of bad blood! And it's all on us, not them." It was harsh and unsavory the truth he spoke, avowing to past mistakes better cemented into oblivion wasn't a walk in the park. Like scratching old wounds, the back door for guilt and shame to gush in was flinging wide open. Lying to Pete would've been so much easier. But he had made up his mind about the kind of person he wanted to be the moment he stood stumped next to the Governor and his companions fell on the arid ground, riddled with bullets. He wanted to be better than that and had grabbed every chance granted to him by the hair. Carol couldn't put a wall up about her past and start over, but he was more than ready for endings and new beginnings. And new beginnings meant to prove himself better than his past choices warranted. "If they come after us, they'll be seeking me and Brian and if they get us, I don't think they'll cause any trouble to the rest of you. But if we resist-"

"We ain't giving up our own," Pete interrupted him abruptly.

"Then it's war and everyone's involved," Caesar countered grimly.

"I'll fight with you."

"My hopes are that it won't come down to that," he sighed. "I'll do everything in my power to prevent bloodshed."

"Most people here will choose to fight for you than turn you in," Pete insisted. He wasn't the ungrateful kind like his brother was, he'd never forget the day Caesar reaped a dog bite in his stomach to save him. "Even Mitch and Mark won't have a choice if the rest of us side for you. You're a good leader. You've earned your place. Even with that flu crap… Man, that was some fast action you took there!"

"I followed Carol's tips," Caesar scoffed and lifted his shoulders, refraining from the credits.

Pete dipped his head, nodding contemplatively.

"If the other option is for innocent people to die, this camp will have to find a way to manage without me. I have enough in my conscience for ten lifetimes." Pete opened his mouth to utter his dissension but was cut off by a waving hand. "Best not talk about war yet, at least not until I speak with Carol," Caesar muttered and glanced around, exhaustion glistening in his hollow gaze. "What time is it?"

"Almost midnight. Her trailer was dark when I walked over here. Bet she hasn't got any sleep these last few days."

"Let her rest, then. We'll catch up in the morning," Caesar complied. Snubbing the drained cigarette in the ashtray, he swiftly lit another one and outstretched a hand Pete gladly clasped. "You're a good friend and soldier, Pete."

Between the rock and a hard place of an abusive father and older brother, Pete blushed, stranger to compliments for his worth, and sent back a worrisome look. "Do you still trust her? Carol?"

"I don't know," Caesar admitted hoarsely, exhaling a nebula of smoke through his nostrils. "You?"

"I wouldn't if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes," Pete replied honestly. "Can't believe she saved you. Man, the fight she put up for you… If she wanted you dead all she had to do was stand by and wait. You were dyin', man. I mean you were really dyin'. Last time I came in here there was blood and vomit everywhere and you couldn't breathe on your own. There was this bag in your mouth."

"And now I'm smoking," Caesar snickered humorlessly, regarding the tobacco smothering between his fingers. "Ill weeds grow apace."

He just wished that burning knife inside him didn't cut so deep.

xxxxx

Hugging her tighter and tighter, fearful that she'd inadvertently squeeze the life out of the girl clinging to her embrace and yet too overwhelmed to control her stamina, Carol floundered with words too flimsy to capture the avalanche of euphoria twirling inside her. "Oh, my God," she huffed out a choking laugh and nuzzled into the girl's head. "Oh, my God… Lizzie!"

From the corner of the room, Daryl watched the heartfelt exchange with a genuinely pleased smile brightening up his face. Crossbow tossed aside and hands tucked beneath his armpits, he was beaming, because that shit over there was a triumph. No degree of eloquence sufficed to describe the injustice the world had done to Carol when Sophia was snatched out of her arms; Carol was meant to be mother. And the fact that, ultimately, despite his previous daft debacle with Sophia, he was the one to give her the fulfillment of that moment, bequeathed to him an entirely new level of self-value. It wasn't Sophia, but it was Lizzie. And it wasn't his idea, it was Michonne's. But he didn't care. If he could click a button and freeze time right here and right now, he'd be complete.

Drawing back, Carol ignored the ache of her knees as they propped her weight on the slatted floor, framing Lizzie's face and then groping down her neck and lank torso. Her gaze darted to Daryl, misty and loving, and her throat bobbed up and down as unshed tears beetled over batting eyelashes before streaming down her face. He nodded his acknowledgement at the gratitude and that other sentiment, the unfathomable one her stares at him always harbored, and she returned her attention back to Lizzie who was caressing her shoulder. At a loss for words, she kept running her eyes all over the girl's face, until her hand tripped at the knife sheathed around her belt and the ghost of a grin tickled Carol's lips.

Lizzie regarded her doe-eyed, her voice mumbling out strained. "You want it back?"

"No. No, no, no, no," Carol said huskily and cupped her face again, obliterating the trepidation looming there. "I want you to keep it and remember me."

"I remember you every day," the girl murmured. "Do you?"

"Every damn minute of every damn day," Carol whispered, ruffling a few tousled, golden strands of hair too recalcitrant to be subdued by an off-handed ponytail behind Lizzie's ear. This unforeseen reunion with her adopted daughter, though short-lived, she would cherish forever. It bore the invigorating breeze of divine compensation for what was ripped away from her. The parallels were just too much, too glaring, too gutting. A blonde twelve-year-old she had under her wing, parted from her for so long that she had finally made her piece with never gazing at those big, innocent eyes again. But this time the finale wasn't bloody and death-smitten, it was blissful. It had cheery squeaks and bright smiles, limbs tangled together, bodies pressed again each other, comfort and hope. Courtesy of Daryl, of course, as everything gleeful seemed to be channeled into her life. Overall, despite Sophia's bleeding memory flashing out in her mind, happiness prevailed inch by inch, shackling the ubiquitous pain in the pit of her stomach. "How is Mika?"

"Good," Lizzie perked up. "She's turning into a real badass, Daryl knows." They both glanced up and he offered a recurrent bounce of his head, mouth slanted downwards to emphasize the truth of the spoken words. "Yesterday she smacked Luke flat on the ground with a move you showed us."

"The stuff I taught you, Lizzie," Carol stressed with an illustrative look. "It was for self-defense, not to attack each other."

"Well, it was self-defense, kind of," the girl giggled, playfully lifting her shoulders. "Luke was pulling her hair."

Chuckling whole-heartedly, stunned by how rusty her facial muscles had grown to real joy, Carol threaded her fingers through Lizzie's hair. As delighted as she was for her long-distance daughters thriving, a pang of resentment, pointing straight to Rick, poked at her heart. She didn't want him to be right about the girls staying at the prison, she wanted them with her, she craved for them with everything she had. Before tonight she had diligently gagged that urge, same way she had wrestled Daryl's memory, but then, when Lizzie careened into her arms, filling that vacant embrace with her warmth and childish figure, that long warded off sense of bereavement replenished everything and then nothing could be re-annihilated again.

"You're such a wonderful girl, Lizzie. I hope you know it."

Reciprocating the firm clutch Carol had on her hand, Lizzie shot her a heartbreaking look. "Why didn't you take us with you?" she inquired ardently, chin trembling and brimming tears ripe to spill. "Is it because I called you mom? Because I swear I didn't do it on-"

"No, honey," Carol gasped, mortified that she could have lived through all these long months of separation with such a burden in her soul. She wasn't alone in this. From her peripheral view, the sight of Daryl tensing at Lizzie's question was anything but innocuous. Grabbing both sides of the girl's face, Carol reigned in her guilt and desperation, the howling conscience mincing her inside out. "No! Listen to me carefully. You're safer in the prison, I can't protect you out here. You did nothing, absolutely _nothing_ wrong. It's all my fault."

Lizzie leapt into her embrace again, arms locking in a death grip around her neck, and Carol crooned soothingly, sweet hushing squirming out in pants. Her face was scrunched up, a doodled canvas of torment and misery and deep wrinkles grooved across her forehead. Harnessed in the impossible direness of her plight, Carol's eyes instinctively sought for Daryl, wondering if he'd still be there for her this time, the bulwark where the grappling hook of her frazzled composure would find purchase.

He was. While every feature wobbled and eyes welled up and drowned again, while lips crushed closed and twitching like electrocuted sinew, his gaze, the measure of everything, was as staunch as a well-rounded boulder embedded in the soil, pumping her up with strength. He was there, the man to always pull her out of the gutter, and she conjured up a miracle to keep her tears sob-less and not to further upset the already shaken Lizzie.

"You're not coming back with Daryl and me, are you?"

Carol frowned at her hands, striving against clawing her own eyes out so as to avoid Lizzie's half-watery half-hopeful look.

"I hate Rick," Lizzie bit out with a grimace, tone seeping repugnance and contempt.

"Don't," Carol said softly. "Rick wanted the best for you."

"Will I see you again? Can Mika see you, too?"

No, of course. The answer was no. Like it should have been three days ago when Daryl pressed her so hard for another meeting and her secrets to come out in the open in that same cabin. And just like three days ago, her heart stuck out a surly tongue to that strait-laced logic governing her decisions and instead of tersely turning down the offer, Carol hung off of Daryl's next words, mirroring the girl's expectant expression. His answer made Lizzie cheer and Carol barely able to get a hold of herself before pulling off a happy dance.

"Sure."

The rest of Carol and Lizzie's reunion flowed without much tension. Bombarded with her questions, Lizzie blabbed on and on about Mika and the other children, the lessons they got, the books they read, their bickerings and make-ups and shortly after the apprehensiveness in the room blotted out entirely. They were actually having fun, the three of them, Lizzie perched on Carol's lap and Daryl plopped at the other side of the table. He caught himself laughing more than once. A couple of hours later Lizzie started nodding off and Carol tucked her in one of the foldaway beds of the second and last room of the cabin.

During her absence, Daryl lit a cigarette, Michonne's how-to-seduce-a-woman-like-Carol fast-track class bleeping inside his head like bullet tips.

_Take Lizzie with you._

_Check._

Michonne was right about that, he knew it from the get-go to the point of mentally scolding his blind panic for not thinking about it first. Lizzie's presence had taken Carol completely aback and the little girl worked her miracle. As hard as Carol tried to force her stony façade back in place, her artificial protection was littered with rifts and ripples that couldn't be restored in an instant. The crack was just too deep. Lizzie deserved a trophy, but her part was done. Now his number was up.

_Carol's all closed off right now. Hope you know it's a defense mechanism, right?_

That translated into 'Be patient' –he assumed. Patience wasn't exactly one of his most identifiable personality traits, couldn't stray more from his peevish demeanor, to put it correctly. But he wasn't all too alien with it anyhow. He was a good hunter, hence a patient hunter. If he approached Carol as his next prey, slowly, with patience, he had the means to corner without jittering her.

_Take it with you and make sure you both use it._

Then it was the booze. Elementary. He should have thought of it, too. Booze, he knew.

_Say her name, without 'fuck you's before or after it this time._

He had that coming. He could do better.

_Hurt her. Find her weak spot and break her._

Sophia. Just that, the spell to haul the genie out of the bottle.

_Sweep her off her feet and blow her away instead of just blow it._

Yeah… And then hell could finally freeze and pink unicorns fly in the sky.

_It's easy, really. When everything zeroes in to fight or flight and jelly knees, remember that you spent four months looking for her._

No objections to that.

So when the door of Lizzie's bedroom clicked close and Carol stalked over the table with an ashtray in hand, wriggling her fingers and chewing on her lip, he reached for his back pack and fished out the flask, deciding it was better to start with something within his comfort zone.

"Planning to get me drunk?" Quirking a brow, Carol huffed out the mockery of a joke and it dawned on him that he wasn't the only one trying to find his footing around there.

"Hooch, pooch and cooch," Daryl memorized, the corner of his lips tugging upwards. "The cure to all your problems accordin' to Merle."

"I don't know what two thirds of Merle's wisdom mean," she chortled and it almost echoed unfeigned this time.

"Consider yourself lucky." He rolled his eyes and swallowed down two brave mouthfuls of whiskey, before handing the flask to her. "Take a swig."

Hoisting it over to her mouth, her nose crinkled at the rancid odor and she gagged as the first sip of alcohol burnt her innards. The second was better, dripping into her stomach effortlessly.

The flask was back in Daryl's grip and he lifted his shoulders. "I ain't gonna bite you or nothin', Carol."

"Like I'd get so lucky," she retorted thoughtlessly and then her hand slapped over her mouth, eyes goggling at the pure shock of how distracted and relaxed she felt for a moment.

He had to stifle that smirk, pretending ignorance of her mortification, and wrestle against the embarrassment coloring his cheeks as he shimmied through his pocket and pulled out a watch, the crystal shattered of the hardship it had undergone in there.

"That's yours," he deadpanned.

Her face hardened, every muscle and nerve aligning as if stretched by an invisible force. "That's Ed's," Carol countered dryly and shoved it away. She saw it then. As the watch skidded on the wooden surface and bounced off the wall, her eye caught what was wrapped around Daryl's wrist, filthy and mud-stained, yet something she'd recognize anywhere.

Following her gaze like a hound, Daryl peeled off Sophia's pony holder and put it in front of her. "Found it in the woods where you were taken," he said roughly, a ribbon of hardly manacled anger warping the bass drawl of his voice. "Not yours too?"

"She's dead, Daryl. Sophia? Dead," Carol whispered, fiddling with the round, royal blue rubber like it could snap and nip her fingertips. "I'm the one who lost her. I know you don't wanna talk about it and I know you think it's your fault, but this is far from true. I was weak on that highway, I failed her."

"We all failed her that day," Daryl said calculatedly. "Rick ain't off the hook for leavin' a lil' girl alone in the woods."

"But ultimately, keeping Sophia safe was my duty. Mine alone. And I was too weak to protect her and now she'd dead," Carol muttered blankly and slowly slid the pony holder back to Daryl. "Someone else's slideshow."

"You're her mother, Carol."

"Was."

Narrowing his eyes, he slid the memory-packed object back. "Just 'cause she's dead, don't mean you ain't her mother no more."

She said nothing, didn't blink, didn't move. Just reached for the flask and swallowed another sip before her fingers returned on the table, engaging on a tapping dance around the hair band her molten gaze refused to abandon.

He wanted another cigarette, but those inches gapping him from the pack required too much of a jarring movement for Carol's ablaze magnetic field. Patience rewarded him after a while when her cold expression quivered, lips puckered and she frowned at herself, the steady up and down of her chest gained in speed and lost in efficacy as heaves of air squirmed out convulsed. He held the oxygen in his lungs the entire time, prying on the slightest shadow to cross those slanted eyes, finding it less risky than actually breathing and jiggle the jumbled uproar going on in her head. She was brawling with someone or something and he needed her to win.

Suddenly, Carol snagged the pony tail holder and glided it over her wrist, locked her bleary gaze with his and ranted, as if a dam had fractured and words, like water, surged out in cascades. "And then a man dies, a man who knew all about it and his dying wish is to trust me with his daughters," she blurted trenchantly, arms wavering around in frenzy when adrenaline belted through her and charged her batteries. "Two children, Daryl, two! When I couldn't even protect one! I didn't want to take the responsibility, I really didn't, but he was _dying_ for Christ's sakes, he was dying! How could I say no?"

Vehemently scrubbing his heavy lids with his fingers, Daryl lit a cigarette and inhaled sharply. The booze was loosening her up, the Sophia card had opened the Pandora's box, even the way her eyelashes batted wildly every time he muttered her name seemed to work, but he resented the visceral impact that success had on her. She was crying and she didn't even know it. "You couldn't," he rasped. "You cared about these kids." If he held her accountable for a crime, that was it. That she cared about each one of them too damn much. It was among the things he couldn't forgive to Rick, that after almost two years with Carol he failed to see something Michonne grasped at 'hello'.

"Yes!" Carol exclaimed. "Yes! And then the flu… Patrick was healthy as a horse in the morning, queasy in the afternoon and dead by night? I _did_ something. I _had_ to do something. I couldn't let another child die on my watch." Her voice trailed off and face dropped in her hands. "I thought I was being strong," she sniveled. "But I became a monster. And then it was done and I couldn't take it back."

Daryl pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eye, groaning. Blindly groping for the flask on the table he finally felt it sliding between his fingers only when Carol was finished with it. He wanted to dash the contents down in a single mouthful until he was completely shitfaced, but that'd be defying the purpose of the whiskey there. Carol's motives, he had never doubted them for a second, but doing the wrong thing for the right reasons was of little consolation for her. When he sprawled heavily over the table, burrowing his chin on his forearms, and glanced up, he found a bloodshot gaze staring at him.

"When Rick told you what I did-" Her tone was velvety and thick, whimpers thwarted in virtue of sheer will.

"I didn't need Rick to tell me crap," he cut her off softly, maintaining the saggy stance. "I figured it out myself during that fuckin' run."

Carol's eyes beaded. "How?"

"Piece of cake once I figured the motive," he grunted grimly, brooding on words to explain that from the mere looks of it, it could have never been anyone else, really. "Someone tried to contain the spread, otherwise the burnin' made no sense. Only a handful of people stupid enough to throw themselves at the curb for the others. Then the crime scene. Sloppy, messy. It wasn't premeditated, someone snapped. And even more, the person who did it regretted it immediately and wanted to get caught. Otherwise, why not clean the place of any evidence? Even less people stupid enough to willingly bring hell on themselves. You were the first name in both lists, Carol."

"You can judge me, you know," she whispered and swiped the tears away. "Go ahead and tell me what a horrible thing I did."

"Ain't nothing to say you don't already know. You don't need a lecture. You need-"

"I did a horrible thing," Carol sniffled, delivering the penance he was refusing her herself, with a supreme absence of any hint of absolution or desire to defend herself hibernating in her blunt statement.

"True," Daryl drawled, steadily holding the unyielding gaze transfixed on him.

"Cold."

"Maybe."

"Inexcusable."

"No," he bit out. "What matters is-"

"Murder," Carol insisted vehemently, voice cracking beneath those effulgent eyes scorching a crawlway straight to her heart. "And Rick-"

"You shouldn't've let him boss you around like that," Daryl hissed and banged his fist on the table. "He kicked you out, so what? That wasn't his fuckin' call! Rick can only speak for himself."

"He locked me out of the car, Daryl!" Carol vented. "He locked me out like I was a stranger. I flipped the handle and I couldn't get in. He said he wouldn't have me around his children. Those were his exact words. That he wouldn't have _me_ around his children… _Me_! And the worst was that he said nobody would want me back. You have to understand. His rejection, I took it. But if I waited and you didn't show or if you came and looked at me like he did, like a murderer…"

Leaning closer, she spread her palms in front of him, trembling, sweltering and blanched like the color was scoured off them. The semantics behind the twitching digits conspicuous. It was a forgive-me plea, an I-did-it-with-these-hands avowal, a can-you-see-past-the-blood-soaking-them question. He could and instantly covered them with his free hand, quenching absently the cigarette with his other.

"It was one royal fuck up, Carol," he let out pointedly, the looming desperation thinly-veiled. "One fuckin' misstep. It ain't you."

Ed's watch showed 3 a.m. The atmosphere inside the cabin was torrid and suffocating. Late August didn't do them any favors, heat and humidity charged the electrified space between them with an explosive dynamic, yet the fingers wrapping around his thumb and those clutching onto the rest were frozen and Carol was shivering as if a snowball had just crushed onto her back.

"Why do you keep saying my name?" she mumbled between pants and hiccups, shaking her head. "You never say my name."

"'Cause it's you, here, now," Daryl rasped, rubbing her hands with both his. "I got no fuckin' clue who you think you are, but it's just you."

A mute 'no' was mouthed and the rattle of protestations clawed up to spur outside only for them to bridle and evanesce on the tip of his tongue when Carol bent over again and pressed her lips on his knuckles. Two single droplets splashed on his rough skin and her mouth caressed them away immediately, retrieving her previous position to regard him sadly.

"I'm gonna tell you everything and you will hate me."

There it was again, the weight of the world hunching her shoulders, and she was procrastinating, clinging to a moment she believed was destined to be short-lived.

Between the two of them, Carol had always been the stronger one. She didn't know it, but she was. Now she was skittish, like a frightened puppy in terrible need of comfort and affection, and the welter knotting up in her laborious gasps charred the back of Daryl's throat. He never contrived how to treat her the way she deserved and now the floor was fizzling away under the jagged soles of his boots, because she was scared, anticipating a rejection that wasn't coming, and her fear scared him breathless because he had no idea how not to fuck up everything beyond repair. He swallowed hard, suffocating. There wasn't enough oxygen in the room.

"I won't."

Carol fidgeted like her chair was scalding, testing her doomed tippy-toe on eggshells, and advanced a fake smile. Sensation of her lower lip was long lost as crusts of mangled skin floated in her mouth and the profusion of encouragement and approval sparkling in Daryl's gaze only prodded her dismay. "Whatever you've thought of-"

"Can't be worse," he grumbled bleakly. "Trust me on that."

"Double it, square it and multiple it by a million," she corrected fast.

Unknowingly, he found himself kissing the hands laced with his in a deadlock, a frantic pulse throbbing in his ears. "Whatever shit you've gotten yourself into, we'll handle it. Ain't gonna break nothin'. Ain't gonna yell. Ain't gonna blame you for a damn thing."

"Don't make promises you don't know if you can keep," she choked out and a whole new wave of weeps erupted.

He dreaded the secret vibrating between them. The certainty dripping from her harrowingly miserable tone threatened to shake his iron resolution off his stand, break him before he broke her.

"Try me," he coaxed one last time. "I'm listenin'."

With a sharp intake of breath, Carol nodded.

Moment of truth.

xxxxx

Neither of them was aware of the man lurking behind the shrubs, full on military gear and an automatic rifle strapped around his shoulders, watching the dim light of the lantern flickering, hurling an outlandish glow to enhance the smooth outlines of the two figures sitting across each other. He knew that know-it-all, snotty bitch was up to something; one drained hag who got everyone so stuck up her ass. All he had to find out now was the identity of that hillbilly leaning over the table and the girl sleeping in the next room, where they came from and what all the coziness with the bitch was about. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy, as he always used to chant to himself and appease his fears whenever he had to pull through his daddy's fist fest and, later on, an impossible mission for the army. He had patience and all the time of the world.

* * *

**Thank you all for reading :) The Carol/Lizzie scene turned out much trickier than I originally thought but I felt that a child would have a lot of impossible questions to ask. She cornered Carol without doing it on purpose just like Meghan did with Brian in chapter 8. Kids do that. Plus I think that Carol leaving after Lizzie called her mom and Carol reacting the way she did in that scene might be something that traumatized the girl and made her feel responsible for being left behind. And Daryl trying to break through to Carol is what got me laid up for good I think, LOL! So, what do you think? Will Carol tell the truth and will Daryl understand?**

**Let me know if you liked what you read and wish me to get better really soon! Hugs!**

* * *

**Camp Population**

**Martinez:** Leader of the camp, brave, protective and good-willed, he believes in second chances and wants to come back from the awful things he did in the past. Lost his wife and two daughters during the outbreak. He took in Brian, Lilly, Tara and Meghan. He doesn't trust Brian but needs him. Shares a close bond with Carol and professed his wish for them to have something more in chapter 8. He saved Carol from Mitch and protected her secrets. He just survived the flu.

**Brian:** The Governor, currently going by as a family man, has Lilly, Tara and Meghan under his wing and genuinely cares for them. He defended Martinez's leadership against Tony (deceased), Mark and Mitch when the former fell sick from the flu. Nobody knows definitively where his loyalties lie yet. We don't know what his plans are and maybe he's suspicious of Carol's identity.

**Mitch and Pete:** As close to their show counterparts as possible for the purposes of this fic, the first is ruthless and vicious while his brother is compassionate and moral-oriented. In 'Cold', Mitch has befriended Brian while Pete is loyal to Martinez. Both have military training. Both abused from their father.

**Mark:** Defender of the camp, possible military training. Twenty-three years old, he looks up to Mitch and undermines Martinez's leadership. He lost his father from the flu.

**Scott:** Defender of the camp, possible military training. Hasn't picked sides between Mitch and Martinez. He lost his sister, Emma, from the flu.

**Alex:** Defender of the camp, possible military training. Loyal to Martinez. His daughter survived the flu.

**Lilly, Tara and Meghan:** Also as close to the show characters. Lilly is a nurse and Brian's companion, Meghan is Lilly's daughter who absolutely worships Brian and Tara is Lilly's younger and impulsive sister (her love interest, Alisha, just died from the flu).

**Erin:** Tony's widow and victim of domestic abuse. Now that she's alone, it remains to be seen whether she can rise from her ashes or end up walker chow. She's friends with Carol.

**Rachel:** Early twenties. Carol taught her how to fight and defend herself.


End file.
